Learning Without Boundaries
Why it is important to keep learning new subjects, especially those outside your area of expertise, and your comfort zone
Everything in the world is interconnected. Our colleges pretend that we can divide useful knowledge into compartments like Engineering, Commerce, Law, Arts, Humanities, etc., but the world stubbornly refuse to honor our boundaries. Real-life challenges often need to be tackled with a combination of knowledge and skills from diverse areas, and thus the most successful people are always the ones who are able to approach problems from multiple angles.
This newsletter will introduce you to a number of fascinating topics that should have been taught to you in your college. (In fact, one of the key goals of Indian’s new National Eduation Policy is holistic and interdisciplinary learning, and exposure to a wide range of subjects, so the next generation of students will hopefully be learning many more of these subjects and then competing with you.)
Why study subjects that appear to be unrelated to your current background, current job, or the skills currently in demand in your company? Because you never know when the situation will change, and you never know which cross-connections across areas of knowledge will pay off down the line.
For example, did you know which seemingly “irrelevant” subject that Steve Jobs studied in college turned out to be extremely important for the design philosophy of Apple? This course affected an aspect of Apple Computers which differentiates Apple from its competitors.
The course was “Calligraphy”!
Attention to high-quality design and detail is what sets Apple products apart from all their competitors, and it all started with the calligraphy class.
Even if you don’t want to change the world, there is a more practical reason for having diversity in your skill and knowledge stack. As people worry about whether AI is going to take away their job, it is important to note that AI does actually take away “jobs”, but rather it automates some of the tasks that people do as part of their jobs. So people whose job involves a small variety of tasks are more likely to have a larger fraction of their job automated, increasing the chances of being laid off. By contrast, people with a wide range of skills end up in more complex roles that require a wider range of tasks, and consequently, a much smaller fraction of their job can be automated.
More importantly, AI changes the nature of the job so that the human ends up with a more complex, higher-level role, if the human is able to acquire the skills needed for the new role. For example, from 1960 to 2010, automation eliminated the need for 400,000 accounting clerks, but created the need for 600,000 accountants. Those who could pick up the new skills needed did well.
In other words, the future belongs to those who keep track of the emerging domains of knowledge, and the skills that are needed there.
The first step for all of this is: Curiosity. A curiosity to know what is out there without limiting yourself to artificial boundaries created by your degree and your job description.
So let’s get started on a journey of discovery.