Learning Is My Love Language

This is an odd thing to learn. It explains why I have the impulse to constantly teach everybody else... because in fact, I want them to teach me!

Very few do.

I want to learn, and I'm a good listener, but often I don't quite hear what others are saying. For me to learn best, I often need to boil things down to their essential principles. I seek to understand how those new principles interplay with my already-internalized ones.

A barrier arises in that most people—even those who read this blog, even if we share similar fundamental values—don't share my weighting scheme. Which principles to emphasize under which circumstances?

I talk funny. It's hard for others to speak in my complex language. I get it.

I'm also lazy. Both teaching and learning require sacrifice and hard work. As Karpathy says, it's "not supposed to be fun." No progress will be made unless the learner takes up the burden of genuine curiosity.

Seth Godin is one of the few people who has taught me a ton over the years. He preaches and practices enrollment and generosity, over and over again. At some point in his decades of blogging and speaking, his unrelenting labor gets through to us all.

As a society, we'd do well to hear him and learn.