Learnings Not Applicable

We try to learn from history. From decisions made in the past, both by us as well as by others. The assumption is that such learnings would help us the next time around we are faced with a similar decision. But is that really true?

No matter what the lesson we learnt or how well we internalize that learning, isn’t Shane Parrish right in pointing out the risk with that approach, if we’re not first checking whether any learnings from a particular scenario are applicable later on:

“We look to models of success — be they companies, prescriptions, or people and we attempt to blindly copy them without understanding the role of skill versus luck, the ecosystem in which they thrive, or why they work.”

So why do people still read biographies of successful people (and companies) in the hope of learning rather than just knowing? Peter Thiel’s answer in his book, Zero to One:

“It’s easier to copy a model than to make something new.”

Just because that hurt doesn’t make it false.

The other problem in trying to apply learnings later on is what Heraclitus wrote in his book, Fragments:

“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”

Or as Thiel wrote:

“The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. And the next Mark Zuckerberg won’t create a social network. If you are copying these guys, you aren’t learning from them.”