Be A Learn-It-All, Not A Know-It-All

A little advice from Reid Hoffman: Be a learn-it-all, not a know-it-all.

It pairs well with Mark Twain: It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.

The way things are supposed to work, the methods for guaranteed success, the trick to pulling it off – they’re all a mirage. At best, we can treat them as a reference point, a prior period to learn from.

Knowledge is like the measurable size of a snowball. Learning is the act of rolling the snowball over, packing on more snow with each turn, compounding more knowledge.

The know-it-all seems to have all of the answers. Maybe they even do for a time. But, the learn-it-all knows that times change and this adaptability will be their advantage. It takes learning to uncover what they know that just ain’t so.

Insatiable curiosity keeps the snowball growing. There’s no better way to build and sustain an edge than to keep learning.