Knowledge is a Compounding Curve

Or How to Get Smarter Under the COVID Lockdown

Many of you reading this are probably familiar with the concept of compounding returns and how powerful they can be.  Maybe you heard the Albert Einstein quote, “Compound interest is the 8th wonder of the world.  He who understands it, earns it; he who doesn’t, pays it.” Perhaps you encountered the concept as it applies to your retirement goals, where a smaller sum invested earlier blows away a much larger investment made later. Or maybe its power really struck you as we watched the compounding spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus as it tore across the globe.

The incredible power of compounding returns is not limited to just debt, financial investments, or viral replication, it can also be applied to the accumulation of knowledge.

Why does this matter? Well, if you’re reading this, you are in all likelihood a knowledge worker.  Just as it’s incredibly costly to put off retirement savings, the opportunity costs of delaying your knowledge growth can be just as devastating.

In his article about General Mattis’ obsession with reading and studying, Ryan Holiday best describes the true cost of figuring it all out on your own:

"...human beings have been fighting and dying and struggling and doing the same things for eons. To not avail yourself of that knowledge is profoundly arrogant and stupid…

Well, the same is true for much less lethal professions. How dare you waste your investor’s money by not reading and learning from the mistakes of other entrepreneurs? How dare you so take your marriage or your children for granted that you think you can afford to figure this out by doing the wrong things first? What is the upside of trying to make it in the NFL all on your own, and not looking for shortcuts and lessons from seasoned pros and students of the game who have published books?"

To delay your learning and personal growth, to not take full advantage of the knowledge of others, is a recipe for missed goals and getting stuck.  What’s worse, our casual methods of improvement (the easy shoulder tap of a mentor or a serendipitous run in with a colleague), are no longer available to us as we’re locked down at home.

So, how does a knowledge worker fully harness the power of compounding returns? By getting a little better every single day through the establishment of:

Habits 

“Go to bed smarter than when you woke up.” — Charlie Munger

“If you can build better habits, make a small 1% improvement in your daily habits, you don't reap that benefit once, you reap that benefit day after day. And so it starts to not only add up but, it starts to compound. And this is a hallmark of any compounding process, which is the greatest returns are delayed.  If you've got that 'hockey stick curve,' there isn't a whole lot of difference between choices on day one, day two, day five.  It's very insignificant." — James Clear, author of Atomic Habits

“Your outcomes are lagging measures of your habits. Your net worth is a lagging measure of your financial habits. Your knowledge is a lagging measure of your learning habits.  You get what you repeat.” IDEM

Discipline/Work Structure

“I say this because unlike every other skilled labor class in the history of skilled labor, [knowledge workers] lack a culture of systematic improvement.

If you’re a professional chess player, you’ll spend thousands of hours dissecting the games of better players.

If you’re a promising young violin player, you’ll attend programs like Meadowmount’s brutal 7-week crash course, where you’ll learn how to wring every last drop of value from your practicing.

If you’re a veteran knowledge worker, you’ll spend most of your day answering e-mail.” — Cal Newport

Be intentional in how you spend your day. Stop rewatching Tiger King. Stop reading the news. Disable social media alerts. Harness the power of Deep Work.

Learning to Think Better

Accumulate mental models: “The quality of our thinking is proportional to the models in our head and their usefulness in the situation at hand. The more models you have—the bigger your toolbox—the more likely you are to have the right models to see reality. It turns out that when it comes to improving your ability to make decisions variety matters.” — Shane Parrish

Building A Second Brain: “a methodology for saving and systematically reminding us of the ideas, inspirations, insights, and connections we’ve gained through our experience. It expands our memory and our intellect using the modern tools of technology and networks.

This methodology is not only for preserving those ideas, but turning them into reality. It provides a clear, actionable path to creating a “second brain” – an external, centralized, digital repository for the things you learn and the resources from which they come.”

Establishing Feedback loops

“Feedback loops are how we learn, whether we call it trial and error or course correction. In so many areas of life, we succeed when we have some sense of where we stand and some evaluation of our progress. Indeed, we tend to crave this sort of information; it’s something we viscerally want to know, good or bad. As Stanford’s Bandura put it, “People are proactive, aspiring organisms.” Feedback taps into those aspirations. — Thomas Goetz

“You don’t know what you don’t know” also known as the Dunning-Kruger Effect

So, if you find yourself amongst the lucky ones with more not less free time during this lockdown, please consider leveraging this time to bend the arc of your own growth curve.  Read widely, listen to interesting thinkers, and re-dedicate yourself to being a student of your discipline.  

And be humble:

“Humility engenders learning because it beats back the arrogance that puts blinders on.  It leaves you open for truths to reveal themselves. You don’t stand in your own way… Do you know how you can tell when someone is truly humble? I believe there’s one simple test: because they consistently observe and listen, the humble improve. They don’t assume, ‘I know the way.’” — Wynton Marsalis