You Know Nothing and You Hopefully Never Will
Why becoming a perpetual beginner is the key to lasting learning and contentment.
Being a know-it-all is the domain of the stupid.
It closes you off to learning.
The biggest mistakes I made early in my career came from making assumptions. I assumed I knew what was being talked about. I assumed I knew the solution. I assumed what to do was clear.
The second biggest mistake was not asking enough questions, and the third not asking for feedback early and often.
The result? Hours wasted. Don’t be like I was, professionally or personally.
Have a beginner’s mindset.
New situations require new perspectives
You have to create a special report at work, you’re learning a new instrument, your cup of coffee came out tasting like tar. Every time you find yourself in a new situation: approach it as a beginner.
Sure, you have 10 years of experience at work. Sure, you played piano at your sister’s friend’s dog’s cousin’s wedding. Sure, you’ve made and drank enough cups of liquid tar to put James Hoffmann to shame.
It doesn’t matter.
Sometimes you need to approach a task from a different angle—one not based on years of experience. Assuming you know what to do can be incorrect. Thinking you know better can also limit the number of people you might take advice from.
Let go of the notion that you know what to do. Treat new situations with curiosity. You’re seeing them for the first time, after all.
What questions can you ask to hit the ground running?
Dumb questions?
Learning comes easy when you program your mind to be a blank slate, and act as if you have no knowledge. Curiosity takes over. You’re less likely to make assumptions and derive incorrect conclusions as the questions clarify the topic.
It makes you less likely to skip steps and waste time chasing wrong results.
The beginner’s mindset empowers “dumb” questions. Everything is open, and nothing is done based on assumptions.
This isn’t to say you should be asking 73 questions about something truly basic at work that you’re expected to know—that’s a one-way trip to your home office, sending resumés that get ghosted and a resulting crisis of confidence. It’s to say to focus on slowing down. Seeing something from a different angle to break through barriers.
Slow down, pay attention and embrace looking stupid for a time.
You’ll approach learning differently, seeing more success and feeling more content. There is always something new to discover in the familiar, while the novel requires care and attention from the start. You’re always improving.
I recently decided I wanted to learn about baking cakes. Trotting out an aesthetic, delicious cake at an event seems like a neat thing to be able to do, but I’m not much of a chef. It’s a new beginning, in unfamiliar territory.
I don’t even have all the right tools, scrambling to find cake pans at a store the day before I was to create my, delicious chocolate cake.
This was my first real, not store-bought-mix-it-up-with-water cake.
I have a partner with cooking experience. In that one cooking session I asked her many dumb, basic questions. Even the ones that were embarrassing, the ones you feel you’re expected to know.
I’m sure she’s questioning my intellect, and how I got even this far in life.
But I’m also sure the next cake I bake will go much smoother.
Everything requires sacrifice
You want to run a marathon? You need to sacrifice the time and effort to train. You want to cruise around the city in a lavish car? You need to sacrifice money. You want to follow the path others expect of you? You need to sacrifice yourself.
Everything represents a sacrifice.
Nothing is without cost. Learning is no different. It requires sacrifices, both big and small. Ones you’ll have to make on a daily basis. Being a beginner, looking stupid, appearing as if you know less than you might—these are some of the sacrifices to learn and have a beginner’s mindset.
Are you prepared to make them daily?
The Note
The Quote
In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few - Shunryu Suzuki
The Promote
This week, I particularly enjoyed reading the second edition of
’s newsletter: Silk & Spider.It’s a newsletter about connections. Jakub has big plans for the future, and I’m excited to see where he takes them.
Thanks so much for sharing Silk & Spider, Rasmus!
And this post really hit home for me. Particularly this part:
"Nothing is without cost. Learning is no different. It requires sacrifices, both big and small. Ones you’ll have to make on a daily basis. Being a beginner, looking stupid, appearing as if you know less than you might—these are some of the sacrifices to learn and have a beginner’s mindset."
When I first started learning bass (my first instrument, at age 27), I felt like the dumbest person to ever try it. Luckily, because it was so new, and I knew I had little to build on, I leaned into asking dumb questions, and going through the basics again and again until they stuck.
But it was definitely painful to be so bad at something for such a long time.
And yet, now I'm extremely grateful, because I got to a level where I can just play for fun. Maybe not super well, but it's a form of self-expression. Like learning a new language.
P.S. The photo with the Mario-like question mark blocks was taken at a pub in Poznan where I live :) I even know the place, have been there a few times!
Well done! A piece on curiosity and beginners mindset.
Is that you voice?