Loved the article 👏 - it goes to the pile to "re-read" a few months later too!
There is a somewhat similar phenomenon in certain "niche" music or film genres, where a mainstream player is *really* good at showing what that niche is capable of, yet at a later stage are neglected and deemed as unimaginative. Despite the fact that those people would not have arrived to that situation otherwise.
I'd add that the closer you get to the last 10%, the more you need to change strategies (IMHO).
a) Look less distilled learnings, and instead look at primary sources. Whether those are one step up the abstraction curve (instead of reading Munger, read Seneca) or whether that means you need to start generating your own firsthand insights from experience. It made me chuckle a few weeks back when a commenter on Byrne Hobart's Substack said something to the effect of "Byrne, how do you find the time to read so much when there is so much wisdom available in newsletters?". Not that there aren't a ton of great newsletters these days, but many fewer really offer synthesis or insight.
b) Learn how to get insights from adjacent fields. Likely the reason why the names you listed are all somewhat polymathic.
I agree with this, it's part of my own model of the situation.
I feel like there's so much mileage to be had out of "b)", that's most of my stragy. "a)" is also necessary to get really far, but it's a lot more work and I guess I don't have quite that much ambition, haha
Ha, yeah, the yield goes way down. It probably helps to have a newsletter, because then *anything* you read can get spun as something with an interesting take on some current event ;).
Well, my brain certainly has been in a different mode since I started this. It's always on the lookout for something that may interest the reader, and I either notice more things and have more thoughts, or I have the same number as before, but now I catch them and write them down somewhere.
Love it. And the mentor line continues to grow, too.
I think the perception of the difference in knowledge depends on the point of view. From the mentor's perspective, the gap may seem smaller than from the student's.
I worked for an international company. An American-born colleague moved to our Latin American office for a few years. He was back here at our HQ in the states, hosting a group of folks from Latin America. He was speaking to them in Spanish to coordinate the day. I speak a little bit of Spanish and was able to pick up bits. I commented to someone from Argentina that the American spoke Spanish very well. He replied "No. Not so well."
It's a matter of perspective. He was certainly better than me. But from a native speaker POV, not so much.
My point is not about unlearned mentors, but about perspective. A novice sees the difference as being greater than it might seem from a learned person.
Very well said. We do appear to measure skill and intelligence and knowledge in a relative, not absolute, manner.
I've read somewhere a while ago that with intelligence, you can only see a couple levels above yourself. Too much higher and you can't separate the super-genius from the hyper-genius.
An interesting related phenomenon is when you learn that these mentors are more complicated than you thought. Buffett’s trades in silver, the real, airlines, and Japanese trading companies all seemed like a departure from what he’d historically done—the real person is always a bit more flexible than the stripped-down mental model we have in mind.
Yeah, spot on. And they were always like that, they didn't betray you by changing, it's people who assumed that they were a structure of simple platonic ideals rather than real people with messy lives and limited brains and willpower, just doing their bests and sometimes experimenting or failing or not being entirely coherent in all their beliefs and actions.
Loved the article 👏 - it goes to the pile to "re-read" a few months later too!
There is a somewhat similar phenomenon in certain "niche" music or film genres, where a mainstream player is *really* good at showing what that niche is capable of, yet at a later stage are neglected and deemed as unimaginative. Despite the fact that those people would not have arrived to that situation otherwise.
Thanks for reading, glad you liked!
I think that's a very good example.. I'm sure a similar thing happens in other areas/sub-cultures/disciplines too... 🤔
Fantastic, this is spot-on.
I'd add that the closer you get to the last 10%, the more you need to change strategies (IMHO).
a) Look less distilled learnings, and instead look at primary sources. Whether those are one step up the abstraction curve (instead of reading Munger, read Seneca) or whether that means you need to start generating your own firsthand insights from experience. It made me chuckle a few weeks back when a commenter on Byrne Hobart's Substack said something to the effect of "Byrne, how do you find the time to read so much when there is so much wisdom available in newsletters?". Not that there aren't a ton of great newsletters these days, but many fewer really offer synthesis or insight.
b) Learn how to get insights from adjacent fields. Likely the reason why the names you listed are all somewhat polymathic.
I agree with this, it's part of my own model of the situation.
I feel like there's so much mileage to be had out of "b)", that's most of my stragy. "a)" is also necessary to get really far, but it's a lot more work and I guess I don't have quite that much ambition, haha
Ha, yeah, the yield goes way down. It probably helps to have a newsletter, because then *anything* you read can get spun as something with an interesting take on some current event ;).
Well, my brain certainly has been in a different mode since I started this. It's always on the lookout for something that may interest the reader, and I either notice more things and have more thoughts, or I have the same number as before, but now I catch them and write them down somewhere.
I guess it's the power of priming!
Ugh, how does Substack not have an edit button?
It must be on the roadmap somewhere ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Love it. And the mentor line continues to grow, too.
I think the perception of the difference in knowledge depends on the point of view. From the mentor's perspective, the gap may seem smaller than from the student's.
I worked for an international company. An American-born colleague moved to our Latin American office for a few years. He was back here at our HQ in the states, hosting a group of folks from Latin America. He was speaking to them in Spanish to coordinate the day. I speak a little bit of Spanish and was able to pick up bits. I commented to someone from Argentina that the American spoke Spanish very well. He replied "No. Not so well."
It's a matter of perspective. He was certainly better than me. But from a native speaker POV, not so much.
My point is not about unlearned mentors, but about perspective. A novice sees the difference as being greater than it might seem from a learned person.
Very well said. We do appear to measure skill and intelligence and knowledge in a relative, not absolute, manner.
I've read somewhere a while ago that with intelligence, you can only see a couple levels above yourself. Too much higher and you can't separate the super-genius from the hyper-genius.
I think it probably works similarly with skills.
An interesting related phenomenon is when you learn that these mentors are more complicated than you thought. Buffett’s trades in silver, the real, airlines, and Japanese trading companies all seemed like a departure from what he’d historically done—the real person is always a bit more flexible than the stripped-down mental model we have in mind.
Yeah, spot on. And they were always like that, they didn't betray you by changing, it's people who assumed that they were a structure of simple platonic ideals rather than real people with messy lives and limited brains and willpower, just doing their bests and sometimes experimenting or failing or not being entirely coherent in all their beliefs and actions.