Learn, unlearn, and relearn – AUDIO NSFW
One of my favourite authors is a guy named Alvin Toffler. He’s written books like Powershift and Future Shock. Future Shock is one of my favorites and the reason is because he takes a look into the future of what’s going to happen and there’s a great quote that he has in there and it goes simply like this, he says, “The illiterate of the future are not those who cannot read or write but the illiterate of the future are those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” Learn, unlearn, and relearn. I’ve been thinking about this and the reason is is because I love learning.
How many times have you guys heard me talk about why learning and self-education? Self-education is so important for a successful life regardless of its monetary, or personal, or anything. Self-education, get edumacated. Now, self-education comes with the intent or assumption that there is some sort of intent or initiativeness to learn.
This doesn’t mean that you’re just passively experiencing life. No, this is an intentional, “Hey, I’m going to be a self-learner, self-educate myself so I can improve.” And I love this. I’m currently in my previous project, learned a ton about podcasting and all the stuff that I wanna get into for the future. But I’m also currently undergoing new learning in a completely new, brand new area of Industry.
Now, I’m not going to talk anything about the specifics of that but what’s important is I’m now learning again. Now, during this learning period, sometimes it can be frustrating because you feel like you’re better because you were adept in the old world of your old project or your old work that you were doing and you assume that you’re able to take on these new tasks, these new ideas with the same ease.
One of the problems with this assumption is it quickly fades to not be an assumption but a reality check that just because you are really good in a previous project or just because you were really skilled in a previous lifestyle or work, doesn’t mean that you can translate that over easily to this new work.
ADAPTABILITY AND LEARNING
And so I’ve been struggling. I’ve been struggling a little bit with this new endeavor that I’m learning about and it reminded me of Alvin Toffler’s quote, right? “The illiterate of the future and not those who cannot read or write but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. “And what that reminded me of is this idea of not just relearning or reminding yourself or learning but unlearning. Unlearning things.
I think that is a question that might be valuable to ask yourself now and again is, “What must I unlearn?” Now, as you can probably imagine me thinking about Alvin Toffler’s quote, right? Learning, relearning, unlearning, I spent a lot of time on this idea around unlearning.
And of course as I thought more about this idea of unlearning, it immediately drew me to Fisher’s Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection. Of course, many of you guys are like what is that? Well, you can blame one of the three master’s degrees that I got back in the past, but Fisher’s Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection is this idea of genetic variance. Ugh, what does that mean?
Well, in terms of definition, Fisher’s Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection is essentially the rate of fitness of any organism at any time is equal to its genetic variance in fitness at the same time. Let me repeat that and then I’ll define it real quick, Fisher’s Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection the idea of genetic variance is the idea of the rate of fitness of any organism at any time is equal to its genetic variance of fitness in that time.
A more simpler way of saying this is the more adapted you are to the present, the more adapted you are to the present the less adaptable you are to the unknown future conditions. Let me repeat that. The more adapted you are in the present, the less adaptable you are for the future. Let me simplify that even simpler.
If you can sleepwalk through your life now, it’s gonna be hard when the hammer drops or an unknown expense drops or an untimely death drops or an untimely fill-in-the-blank drops, that’s the idea. The better-adapted you are, the less adaptable you tend to be.
I’m sure many of you guys know individuals that are basically sloths, that just go to work and come home, and sit on their couch, watch ESPN or communist news network, pick your choice, it doesn’t matter, but these guys could literally sleepwalk through their life…also known as government worker. Sorry for all you government workers out there, but you know I’m not lying.
You see? What happens guys is because time and experience—with time and experience in a non-challenging, uneventful life—with time and experience in an unchallenged, uneventful, rote, static, overly consistent life is a calcification of your behaviours. It’s a solidification of your lifestyle, the patterns of your behaviour have been firmed. They are solid. It is easy now.
How many people do you think—I live in America so let’s just talk about America for a second, but how many people do you think in America have relatively fallen asleep to the potential risks of the world? How many do you think? How many you think are just skating by, just living paycheck to paycheck and then there could be 10,000 reasons for that but out of the 10,000 reasons why people live paycheck to paycheck, some of the reasons are people is just asleep.
They are just going through life learning nothing new, nothing challenging, everything is the same. God, I can’t believe and could not imagine a life where everything every day is almost exactly the same. Now, I tell you, I mean, I wrestled with this a lot in my previous life as a consultant or even when I was building a company. Let’s just start there.
When it comes to hiring for example, when I was hiring? The question is, do I hire for now? Right? Are they more adept at the present life or the present challenges that I have? Should I hire for now or should I hire for the future, right? This is a risk-reward trade-off but let’s think about this, right?
In hiring example, if I hire for now, they’re probably gonna be older, they’re probably gonna be more expensive, and certainly they have more experience because they can address the problems and fix the problems today.
Now, if I hire for the future, these individuals in mask generally are younger, cheaper, less experienced, but are more adaptable towards the future because they haven’t been so calcified. They haven’t been so solidified in behaviors and old-world thinking, right? You’re with me right now, are you?
This is also something that I struggled with as a consultant, as a consultant trainer, right? Do I train for now? Right? Do I help them and train them for the problems of today or do I train them for the future? Do I train them in preparation for the future? And I bet a lot of you guys can assume as to where I fell on both the hiring and both the training, right?
I trained for adaptability, I trained for future preparation. I have a bias towards investing in the future and maybe even at the sacrifice of, like, just a little bit performance for today because the future is coming and I’m a positive thinker so I always believe the future is coming. I don’t have any ideas that I’m gonna be dying tomorrow or anything like that, that’s for negative Nancies. I’m not that type of dude.
I always believe the futures coming and so I wanna just take a little bit out. Just a little bit out of today and I’m okay with that for some investment in the future. And so what I’m doing is I’m learning. I’m learning. I’m going and learning a completely new industry, a completely new idea, it is exciting.
Now, what do I need to unlearn? I’ll tell you immediately. Let’s go through them. When I’m learning I’m learning a new business, I’m learning a new industry. What am I relearning? I’m relearning that it’s hard to learn again especially, if it’s complicated or complex and something you’ve never done before. And what am I unlearning? I’m unlearning that I cannot immediately pull from my previous heuristics, my previous experience, the historicity of my experience, I can’t pull from that and use that as a crutch. This is brand new, guys. Absolutely brand new. And I’m excited about that.
And so we talked about a lot of things here, guys. We’re gonna make this one a relatively short one today. But we talked about a lot of things, right? The illiterate of the 21st century, the leader of the future are not those who cannot read or write but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn that moved us to the whole idea of Fisher’s Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection which is the more adapted you are to today but less adoptable you’re gonna be in the future because things have gotten easy. You’ve gotten soft, right? Come on. Let’s be intellectually honest, guys.
Over time you get soft–anybody could tell you that. Especially, if you’re not learning or doing anything different. And so here’s the question for you guys today. As I’m jazzed up about learning new stuff even though it’s frustrating sometimes I feel like I totally should be able to get this to faster but I have to relearn that.
And so the question for you guys today is what have you adapted to? What have you adapted to today that makes you potentially unfit for your future? Let me say that again, what have you adapted to today that makes you potentially unfit for your future goals? Let that sink in.
What have you become so slothful at? What has become too easy? Where have you gotten too lazy? And this laziness made just before fitting the future that you really want. You know, at times like these you know what’s welling up in my gut? This whole idea of like, “Dude, come on, guys. I’m learning something new, y’all should be. I’m not gonna do that.
I’m not gonna go the ego route, like, I’m really excited about learning this stuff. Did I have a frustrating four hours today? Absolutely, I did because I feel like I should have gotten it faster than I did. But four hours of, kind of, head-banging against the computer, I’m gonna get it. I’m gonna get it. And I’m excited that I’m going to get it. It’s going to work out and you guys know the feeling of when you finally get it, right?
You finally achieve it. You finally—like, “Oh, my gosh. it clicks, right?” And you’re like you won’t miss the four hours—the six hours–however long it took you to finally click because once it clicks then you can use that momentum to keep going, and learn more, and become more proficient, and have more mastery over that craft, that market, that idea, and then you’re making more steps towards it.
As more people see that you’re doing stuff, they’re seeing that you’re taking steps and this ain’t just some sort of side hobby, this is actually like movement. Then you might be able to garner support. Look, guys, I can tell you stories all day of how things can or could but the question you have to ask yourself is, why am I not doing? Where have you become lazy, my friends? I know I get lazy. I get it. Even me. Even me, my friends.
Where have you become too adapted? Where have you become too adapted to…that makes you potentially unfit for the future? This is Peter Saddington, the Bitcoin Lambo. If you liked this episode guys, make sure that you subscribe, that you smash the like button, and if you’re feeling witty please feel free to send this to one person today. Thanks.