Learning

The New York Times has created a new series focused on mid-lifers and beyond pursuing their dreams. The first story was about a woman who learned how to swim at age 68. It’s an encouraging story about resourcefulness and resilience. In the interview she says, “Finally I decided if I don’t try, it’s never going to happen.”

As entrepreneurs, we tend to focus on our wins and greatest successes. But what about our greatest failures? After all, it is these lessons that lead to much of our wisdom.

Curing aging is a popular narrative amongst the tech and finance intelligentsia, even though we haven’t cured the common cold yet, or cancer, or Alzheimer’s. Of course, it doesn’t matter. The 1-percenters want more years added onto their lives, and so the “live forever” research gets more and more funding.

Over the twenty months since starting this Wisdom Well blog, we’ve published a quarter-million words with our daily missives. That’s comparable to writing four books. Whew! The good news is that I love writing in this form. Hope you enjoy your morning microdose of wisdom and wit.

Andrew Huberman may be the most celebrated neuroscientist in the world. If not, he’s definitely the most listened-to, evidenced by this Stanford professor’s extremely popular podcast. It was recommended to me by Eduardo Briceno, Carol Dweck’s (“Mindset”) protege and a friend of MEA.

As I slide the slippery slope toward retirement, I’ve tried lots of novel activities to keep my brain sharp and engage me in the way my career has. Unfortunately, most of the standard “hobbies” I tried were quickly abandoned because I compared myself to experienced writers, artists, singers and musicians.

Newsflash: Our linear progression of learning through a single, lifetime career died last century. What is more, your job will likely evaporate this decade. And you’re going to live longer. These two facts essentially mean you’ll need to swerve into new careers at unpredictable points throughout your life.

Today, we have six generations of adults inhabiting our planet. The original 20th-century premise of adulthood learning revolved around the simple idea that we would learn until early adulthood and then use that learning for the rest of our lives.

Happy Valentine’s Day. So many of us are wise in the mind but foolish in the heart. Sometimes we even try to apply to our romantic relationships what has worked in our careers. After all, success in one part of our life must breed success elsewhere, right?

Mid-March of last year, I had to do the unthinkable...I had to learn how to love digital. The world had completely changed. And like many of you, I needed to figure out how to leverage new tools in a brand new world.