Techcrunch was founded by leading blogger Michael Arrington who was recent fired from Techcrunch by their new owners, AOL thanks to reported conflicts of interest with a new investment fund that he founded recently. Michael popularized Techcrunch with his ‘I don’t give a sh*t’ style of writing and inculcated that culture amongst his team as well. Now, Michael has started blogging on his own blog called Uncrunched and I wanted to draw attention to a part of his first post.
He writes of the 3 things to expect from him and after Transparency and Truth, he writes about Bias –
– BIAS: I have lots of it, and I never try to ignore it or hide from it. The main thing to know about me is that I’m a champion of entrepreneurs and the startups they build. They are my rock stars. If in doubt I side with them, and that’s clear from my writing. For more on this, read my pirate post and mythoughts on how government can best help Silicon Valley.
I found this bit very fascinating. And I started reflecting on where my biases lay. And I really like the way he demonstrates his biases by saying ‘If in doubt, I side with them.’
I realized I naturally have many biases as well. And they naturally stem from ideas/ideals that I believe in. What I would find scary is if I didn’t have any biases because I would assume that means I don’t feel strongly about anything..
I have a natural bias towards ‘doing’ and ‘doers’, towards entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs, towards books and advancing our education, towards leadership and management primarily in reference to ourselves, towards family and the importance of having a steady personal life, to living below our means, to self discipline and persistence, to inspiration, to principles and values, to risks, failure, openness and to a search for understanding of ourselves.
I naturally favor experience and action over speculation. Almost every learning written here has only been brought in here after I’ve tried and experienced it. That’s why this blog will only ever be as experienced (or good) as I am. That’s the way of things. In a previous comment thread, I had a very kind comment from AbCarl who also request a post on Careers. I admit that one is long overdue but again, I find myself inadequate to shed any light on this subject when I haven’t been able to figure it out for myself. In time though, I’m hopeful it would happen.
And I also realize I truly believe in the power of a learning a day. I believe there will come a time when schools educate their students on this philosophy as a way of life. There are limits on what we can do career wise depends on where our talents lie. I can never dream of being a professional basketball player because I just don’t have what it takes. But, I can definitely believe in my ability to keep learning, try, fail and eventually find where my talents do lie.
Make no mistake, a learning a day assumes failure. But in that, it is unflaggingly optimistic. It assumed that you have stumbled, and not fallen. And that the stumbling will be the making of you.
It’s with these biases that I operate. Over time, my beliefs on some of these may change but what won’t change will be the fact that there always will be strong biases. And I always welcome you to challenge them in the comments as many of you do from time to time because I also value openness and I’m looking forward to the discussions. Besides, there are few things that get me going as much as some good spirited debate.
We live and we learn.
The purpose of education is to replace an empty mind with an open one, after all.
That said, as Arrington put it..
Ok, now that we’ve got that stuff behind us, let’s do some blogging!
Indeed.
A Learning a Day 