3 Gigantic Accountability Mistakes Lifelong Learners Need to Avoid
“Arm yourself with specific knowledge, accountability, and leverage.”
- Naval Ravikant
Read time: 4 minutes
Accountability forces people to take responsibility for their actions (or lack thereof) and not blame some external force. It gives you skin in the game.
Shunning from responsibility does the opposite. You let bad habits and bad judgement steer your professional and personal life always looking to blame someone or something else.
In life, people who hold themselves accountable are less likely to let complacency creep in. They see accountability as a stepping stone for growth, not a crutch.
Here are 3 mistakes lifelong learners need to avoid to become more accountable:
1. You Don’t Test Critical Thinking
Lifelong learners pull ideas from multiple disciplines, which increases the complexity of their thinking. You think that by having models in your head, ready and waiting to be used when a problem arises you are gaining knowledge. This is incorrect. Prescriptions for models are typically based on general consensus and may have no bearing on your individualistic problem. It may hinder you.
Solution:
Reading books, papers, blogs or indeed listening to and watching audio are all glorified methods of accumulating ‘knowledge.’ The only way to test if you understand something is to put it to use. Or, teach it as Feynman suggests. Testing your theoretical knowledge and applying it to your individualistic scenario you get individualised feedback. Not some anecdote. You test the model’s accountability.
Example:
You come across a popular economic theory but realise it clashes with another discipline such as psychology. What are you to do? Do you take the popular economic theory at face value or do you dig down into the research of both disciplines and find ways to test validity?
2. You Ignore New and Better Ways of Thinking
As a lifelong learner, you accumulate knowledge and guard it with your life. It is holy. There will always be some new fad or trend but your way of working, operating and thinking is tried and tested. Concrete.
Solution:
Lifelong learning is just that-learning. You must be ready to throw away (or alter) your trusted and deep-rooted beliefs. Learning isn’t and shouldn’t be a dogmatic process and indeed finding new areas of knowledge that have only just opened up should be seen as exciting, not as conflict. By holding yourself accountable to the truth you become indifferent.
Example:
You take a course on data science but are struggling with the programming side of things. The options are to give up and admit the course isn’t for you due to its complexity or put in the extra time required to spot and get up to speed where you are falling short.
3. You Go It Alone
Some people dedicate their whole lives to a single problem or question and being collaborative would only hinder them. I’m willing to bet that you’re not a Darwin or Einstein.
Solution:
Whether or not our world is truly more complex than ever is up for debate but it is certainly more connected and it certainly is more fast-paced. Collaborative learning fosters accountability in the sense that other people rely on you for your insights just as much as you rely on other people for theirs.
Example:
You run a construction firm involved in building a multi-storey apartment in the city centre. Before there’s any work on-site collaboration is required between the engineers, architects and contractors to ensure the building design is as per what the client has asked, within budget and to building and planning regulations. Throughout the process, each team has tasks they need to finish and pass on so other people can complete their tasks and pass them back around.
Accountability is a currency. It’s a currency with other people, but more importantly, it’s a currency that you can withdraw as dividends for yourself in years to come.
I created this simple monthly accountability tracker called The Monthly Personal Board Meeting borrowed from Matt Gray.
You can download it for free here.
Until next time,
Karl (The School of Knowledge)
Whenever you’re ready
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