How to become a 'learning machine'
Your brain is your single-most valuable asset.
It's not just what you know, but how you process information and behave that will determine your trajectory in life.
As the late Charlie Munger once said:
I constantly see people rise in life who are not the smartest, sometimes not even the most diligent, but they are learning machines. They go to bed every night a little wiser than they were when they got up, and boy, does that help, particularly when you have a long run ahead of you.
Develop into a lifelong self-learner through voracious reading. Cultivate curiosity and strive to become a little wiser every day.
If you can reduce your distractions and carve out 12 focused hours a day for work/study/learning, you'll be well on your way to success... but how you use those hours is key.
You must become a "learning machine" at work, at school, and in your personal life. So in today's e-mail – in the spirit of my other e-mails this past week – I'll share some of the tips I have to do just that...
Starting in preschool, I've been incredibly fortunate (thanks mostly to my parents' sacrifices) to attend some of the best schools in the world: Bing Nursery at Stanford, Eaglebrook in seventh and eighth grade, Northfield Mount Hermon for high school, Harvard University, and finally, Harvard Business School ("HBS").
I'm embarrassed to admit that I wasn't always a learning machine: despite attending these schools, filled with wonderful teachers, most of the time I cut as many corners as I could and, as a result, didn't learn nearly as much as I could have. What a waste!
I would urge any younger folks who are still in school not to waste an incredible learning opportunity by skating through like I did. For every class, even – or perhaps especially – the ones that aren't naturally the most interesting, dive in and learn as much as possible.
And never let up. It doesn't end with formal schooling. If you want to be successful in life, you need to be a lifelong learning machine, or everyone else will pass you by. Look at Warren Buffett, still learning at age 93!
After two decades of nonstop studying, I remember thinking when I graduated from HBS at the ripe-old age of 27, filled with the hubris Harvard seems to instill in many of its graduates, that I was ready to go forth and conquer – reaping the benefits of my hard work, prestigious degrees, and vast knowledge and capabilities.
How wrong I was!
In reality, I was an inexperienced naïf with nothing more than a good foundation for what I now know has been my lifelong learning journey.
To become truly successful, you must get on a steep learning curve and never get off it. Every day for the rest of your life, you should strive not only to keep abreast of the major events of the world but also to learn something new.
To become a high-performance learning machine, ask yourself some questions:
- Am I keeping up with the world?
It's critical to develop the habit of reading one or more major newspapers every day like the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the Financial Times (I read all four).
I basically read nonstop, all day, every day. And not just about investing, which is my job – I try to read as broadly as possible. I agree with Munger, who once said that in his entire life, he had never met a single person who he considered to be well educated who didn't read a lot.
- Where in my life am I doing a deep dive?
It's important to develop a broad range of knowledge but equally important to go very deep in a few areas in which you become an expert.
Beyond investing, such areas for me include education reform, the U.S. Navy SEALs (including signing up for two grueling weekends with ex-SEALs), the new weight-loss drugs, criminal justice reform, the opioid epidemic, China, Africa, and extreme sports/adventures.
- Am I reading more than my social media feed?
If you get most of your information from reading/watching Facebook, X, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, and/or TikTok, you're in trouble. True learning comes from reading or listening to in-depth articles and books by top journalists and authors.
Listening to Audible books, podcasts, and YouTube
I used to read dozens of books a year. But as the number of e-mails soared to hundreds each day and I started reading more and more content on the Internet, the number of books I read slowed to a trickle.
Then, a few years ago, I discovered Audible and podcasts... and those changed my life.
I almost never listen to music anymore (sadly). Now, during every moment when I can't read – usually when I'm riding my bike, driving, working out at the gym, or walking somewhere – I put on Bluetooth headphones and listen to a book, podcast, or YouTube video. Even better, I've trained myself to listen at two- or even three-times speed.
In a typical day, I might go to the gym for 45 minutes and then have a meeting or other event in Midtown, which is a 15-minute bike ride each way.
That's one and a quarter hour every day, which is equal to nearly four hours of a book at regular speed – a third of a typical 12-hour audiobook. Thus, I'm cranking through at least one book and numerous podcasts every week, which has enriched my life in innumerable ways.
The importance of getting training
If you're really smart and disciplined, you can make a lot of progress on your own.
But to really master a subject area, profession, or other high-level skill, you're going to need training.
In his book The Talent Code, Daniel Coyle argues that bringing true talent to light requires three ingredients: coaching, motivation, and practice.
Think about it: how does someone become a top-notch surgeon, musician, teacher, or pilot?
In each case, they go to school to learn the basics and spend a minimum (as best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell notes) of 10,000 hours practicing, but a key part of the learning is becoming an apprentice to one or more people who can teach the higher-level skills that they can't learn in the classroom.
It's true in athletics as well. Michael Jordan had personal drive and natural talent, but he became one of the greatest basketball players in history because he also had good coaches. Ditto for every other top athlete.
I started playing tennis when I was very young and eventually played on my high school varsity team. But I wasn't good enough to play in college, so I ended up playing only a few times a year from roughly ages 20 to 50.
However, I then started playing again with a group of friends in New York City and loved it... so I decided I wanted not only to get my old game back but also to raise it to the next level (or, in the parlance of the tennis rating system, go from a 4.0 to a 4.5).
Initially, I was playing once or twice a week with friends. I was having fun, but my game wasn't improving until I met a pro who's an excellent player (he'd probably be ranked in the top 1,000 players in the world) and instructor.
I started doing one- to two-hour sessions with him every week, and he remade my backhand, taught me smart strategies, and had me hit thousands of balls in various focused drills to teach me new skills and hone my muscle memory. It has made a huge difference.
Similarly, no one becomes an expert investor on their own. The real ascension up the learning curve will only happen if someone with more experience teaches you.
Legendary investor Julian Robertson of Tiger Management is a great example: so many of his protégés have launched successful, multibillion-dollar hedge funds that there's a name for them: "Tiger Cubs."
I should have taken the time to work for and learn from a veteran... but having rashly started my own fund without any of the requisite experience, at least I did the next best thing and got myself on a steep learning curve.
Get credentialed and move to the city
My friend, serial entrepreneur, and NYU marketing professor Scott Galloway has some great advice for young people: get credentialed and live in a major city.
An important part of becoming a learning machine is your environment.
During your early years, this means, if you're lucky, attending a high-quality school where you'll be surrounded by smart students and teacher/professors from whom you can learn and earn one or more educational credentials (such as a bachelors' and, preferably, a graduate degree, ideally from a "brand name" school) that will open doors for you the rest of your career.
The second half of Galloway's advice isn't as obvious, but I think he's right that most folks, especially young people early in their careers, would be well served to live and work in a major city.
You might think that with high-speed Internet connections and more and more people working from home (accelerated, of course, by the pandemic), physical location would be less important, but I'd argue the opposite (again, especially for those early in their careers).
Major cities are where the action is – and, I think, will continue to be, even in a post-pandemic world. We're in a knowledge-based world, and new companies, jobs, and wealth are being created at a rapid rate.
To maximize your chances of a successful career (as opposed to merely a series of jobs), you want to be in the center of things to develop your skills and your networks.
My oldest daughter, Alison, earned an economics degree from Carleton – a fantastic small liberal arts college in Minnesota.
During her job search in early 2018, as her graduation approached, she cast a wide net. But we encouraged her to come back to New York City – a vibrant city that she knows well and where she, my wife Susan, and I have strong networks.
And Alison did come back. She took a job as a consultant at Ernst & Young, where she received four years of excellent training and mentoring, and then the company paid for her MBA program (she's graduating from Dartmouth's Tuck business school in June).
Develop expertise
The world is too competitive these days to simply be a smart generalist.
The best jobs (and highest incomes) are going to those who, yes, have a broad skillset but also develop deep expertise in a particular area.
I've never been able to find the exact quote, but I recall Munger at a long-ago Wesco annual meeting using a tennis analogy for when it comes to developing expertise. As I recall him saying:
When you're young, you should practice your forehand, backhand, serve, overheads, and net game. But at some point, if you have a particularly great forehand, you should structure your life so that all you do is pound forehands all day long.
Deep expertise doesn't come from the general knowledge and skills you acquire in elementary school, high school, or college – that's just the foundation.
You need to figure out what you're truly interested in and passionate about and then do three things:
- Get a job at a great firm with a strong training program.
- Get a graduate degree in your field from a prestigious institution.
- Find multiple mentors for whom you can apprentice.
I was fortunate to get these things right in my 20s: I got a job at the Boston Consulting Group out of college, went to HBS, and worked with renowned HBS Professor Michael Porter for five years.
(For more on my experience with Professor Porter and what I learned from him, see my March 28 and April 1 e-mails.)
Build a foundation
Before you can start to develop specialized expertise, you need a solid foundation.
Start by developing what Munger called "a latticework of mental models," which is a fancy term for a broad background of knowledge in things like STEM, literature, psychology, one or more languages, etc., beginning as early as high school and continuing throughout the rest of your life.
In part, you can do this by going to good schools and taking challenging courses, but it's critical to supplement your formal education with a lot of reading and traveling.
I regret that I didn't start taking an interest in investing until I was nearly 30 years old – very late – but at least when I did, I had a good foundation upon which to build.
I also didn't waste my time going down the rabbit holes of various other types of investing, like technical analysis. I quickly recognized that value investing was the most sensible approach and best suited my temperament, so I focused my efforts in that area, which helped me rapidly move up the learning curve.
Before I knew it, I was teaching others.
Develop the 'soft stuff'
Your smarts, work ethic, and credentials are all important... but you need to marry them with what I call the "soft stuff" if you want to be a well-rounded, successful, happy person.
This is what Buffett once said to a group of students:
How I got here is pretty simple in my case. It is not IQ; I'm sure you will be glad to hear.
The big thing is rationality. I always look at IQ and talent as representing the horsepower of the motor, but that the output – the efficiency with which the motor works – depends on rationality. A lot of people start out with 400-horsepower motors but only get 100 horsepower of output. It's way better to have a 200-horsepower motor and get it all into output.
So why do smart people do things that interfere with getting the output they're entitled to? It gets into the habits and character and temperament, and behaving in a rational manner. Not getting in your own way.
As I have said, everybody here has the ability absolutely to do anything I do and much beyond. Some of you will, and some of you won't. For those who won't, it will be because you get in your own way, not because the world doesn't allow you.
Best regards,
Whitney
P.S. I welcome your feedback – send me an e-mail by clicking here.