The most important value for success

Career success is hard to define. Is it the title of your position? Is it the amount of money you make? Is it the number of people you impact? Is it the positive contribution you make to the society? Is it the contribution of your creation? Whatever the definition of success maybe for you - it takes many values to accomplish success in one's career.

Hard work, teamwork, dedication, accountability, honesty, integrity, passion, being a self starter etc. are all great values and are very important. But, in my opinion, there is one value that is the most important and that is - passion for learning (and unlearning).

In the present world, our college education does not impart learning that will last us a lifetime. In many cases what recent graduates learn in universities is not good enough even for their first job (this problem is more acute in India, where a big chunk of new graduates are not really employable, but that is a topic for some other day). To be successful at work (and life in general), one must imbibe the passion for learning. In our formal education most people (I was one of them) are never taught how to learn - most of us are taught how to do well in exams. Real learning happens when you go deeper in the concept or apply your learning in practice or when you learn for the sheer joy of learning. Certainly real learning happens when you have knowledge from the learning as the real motive rather than the monetary consequence of that learning. Learning has to have an intrinsic motivation (“to be a great computer scientist”, “to be a good husband or a father” etc.).

Over the period of my career, I have interviewed a lot of people and one question that has stood the test of time for identifying great hires is this:

“What have you learned over the last six months or so that your job did not require you to learn?”

I firmly believe that work does not provide for all the learning and one must be a passionate self learner all the time.

Most of the non/marginal learners do not have any (or any good) answer for the above interview question. Once someone answers “I learned XYZ”, I ask “What made you learn XYZ?”. Often the answer is - XYZ is a hot skill in the job market. XYZ may be a hot skill, but that is not a good enough reason to learn it. That is not an intrinsic motivation. One example of an intrinsic motivation answer is “I really have a passion to be the best in my field and I heard the impact XYZ was having on the field. That really fascinated me to go deep and explore XYZ. Even though I really had a grueling work schedule, I spent ten hours a week for last two months learning XYZ”. You can really go deep with this question and understand if the candidate has true passion for learning. 

The path to self-learning has never been easier. With the advent of fast internet connectivity, powerful computers and smartphones, the vast knowledge of the world (from free to paid) is at our fingertips. One does not need to be in Boston or Palo Alto to have access to the world experts - we can now learn from the best minds from comforts of our home.

People who are true self-learners go far in their career, but for that one also needs to master the art of “unlearning”. Unlearning is important in not getting rigid in one’s thinking. Over a period of time, new knowledge makes the old learning dated. Our methods for applying that knowledge also start to suffer. It’s like plaque clogging our artery. That becomes a liability. We need to unlearn “old baggage” that is cluttering our mind so that we can make space for the new learning. 

So, the most important value for success is the passion for learning. 

Be a lifelong learner! 

Godspeed!

-Pramod Jajoo