Unlearning 101

One Year of Unlearning

"Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out." Thomas Cardinal Wolsey

Today is the one year anniversary of the beginning of this blog on unlearning. To honor the occasion and to remind myself of the wisdom of the above quote -- as well as the difficulty of unlearning -- I am posting a link to my original entry.

As always, I welcome your thoughts, ideas, stories and observations on the concept of unlearning. In short, I'd like to know what can I unlearn from you?

Unlearning "Land Bridges": A Lesson for Scientists

In relative terms, the field of plate tectonics is still fairly new -- becoming widely accepted only in the mid-1960’s. The idea that massive continents could have drifted apart over millions of years was, however, first expounded on by an amateur American geologist, Frank Bursley, in 1908. Bursley was struck by how the shape between the west coast of Africa and the east coast of South America looked as though they could fit together like two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, and suggested the movement of the continents might also explain the formation of mountain ranges. Bursley provided little evidence and his idea was soon – and easily – dismissed by the scientific establishment who had little time for the “strange” theories from amateurs.

 

A few years later Bursley’s idea was picked up by a German meteorologist, Alfred Wegener, who was disturbed by the many animal and fossil anomalies which didn’t fit conveniently into the day’s existing theory of how the earth was formed. Again, it was dismissed. This time because the idea came from an outsider – a meteorologist.

 

And what precisely was the leading theory used by geologists to explain how the exact same fossils of animals and plants could have existed on the opposite sides of different oceans? The answer was “land bridges” -- mysterious strips of land, for which no evidence existed, but miraculously allowed animals to peacefully and successfully meander thousands of miles across vast expanses of the world’s oceans. For example, when an ancient horse named Hipparion was found to have lived in both Florida and France, geologists drew a land bridge across the Atlantic Ocean to explain away this disturbing discrepancy. Soon, a variety of other land bridges begun to spring up and populate the world of geological science in order to explain everything from how tapirs existed in both Southeast Asia and South America at the same time to how snails could turn up in both Scandinavia and New England.

 

Surprisingly, and in the face of a complete and utter lack of evidence, land bridges remained the geological orthodoxy for the next 50 years. In 1944, a British geologist, Arthur Holmes, wrote a book entitled Principles of Physical Geology elaborating on Wegner's theory but it was dismissed by one reviewer who even had the temerity to warn that Holmes presented his arguments so coherently that they might actually be believed by students! In 1955, no less a figure than the esteemed Albert Einstein wrote a ringing endorsement for a book which all but ridiculed the ideas of Wegener and Holmes.

 

And in 1964, in the face of mounting evidence, a Canadian geologist by the name of Lawrence Morley wrote a paper explaining how magnetic studies of the floor of the Atlantic Ocean were spreading in the exact motion prescribed by the theory of “continental drift.” Morley’s paper was abruptly and rudely dismissed by the editor of the prestigious Journal of Geophysical Research with this now infamous note: “Such speculations make interesting talk at cocktail, but it is not the sort of thing that ought to be published under serious scientific aegis.”

 

Later that year at a conference of the Royal Society the tide finally began to turn but it wasn’t until 1968 when the same publication, which had rejected Morley’s paper only four years earlier, published the article which gave the science of plate tectonics its name.

 

The story serves as a wonderful reminder to those scientists who are quick to dismiss ideas from amateurs, outsiders, and unconventional thinkers. To this end, I invite you to watch this 60 Minutes segment on “Cold Fusion” and pay special attention to the outright dismissal of the idea by some of today’s leading experts. Could they be wrong? I don’t purport to know the answer but history suggests that these scientific experts should at least entertain the notion that they might be wrong.

 

The same is true of the theories of Aubrey de Grey, an outsider from the field of computer science, who is strongly challenging today’s conventional wisdom on the “science of aging.”

Unlearning 101: Lesson #18 -- Unlearn Your Preferences

Daniel Ariely's excellent 16-minute presentation at TED:

Never Let Your Ego Stop You from Unlearning

"The most important lessons lay not in what I needed to learn, but in what I first needed to unlearn." Jim Collins

The following quote was taken from this Harvard Business article entitled "Never Let Your Ego Stop You from Learning." I would like to argue that ego is even a bigger deterrent to unlearning. Why? Because once a person or an institution has invested time, effort, energy and money in becoming an established leader or expert in a certain field, it is that much more difficult to unlearn the things that provided this elevated status. This is because it would require the person or institution to admit that their status or expertise was based on a faulty or misguided assumption. This is why brilliant scientists often can't let go of an existing paradigm -- even in the face of compelling evidence. To do so would mean invalidating a lifetime's work -- and this isn't easy even for the world's smartest and most intelligent people. In fact, it can be more difficult.

My advice: If you are serious about unlearning, you'll need to learn to check your ego at the door. This might not feel comfortable and it may mean you can no longer lay claim to the title of "expert", but it will permit you the ability to enter new and exciting rooms, and quite possibly allow you to make discoveries that will take you to the next level.

Unlearn the Interview

You are about to make an important hiring decision, and it is almost time for the all-important face-to-face interview. If you could only ask one of the following ten questions, which would you choose:

1.      Why should I hire you?

2.      What do you see yourself doing five years from now?

3.      What do you consider to be your greatest strengths and weaknesses?

4.      How would you describe yourself?

5.      What college subject did you like the best and the least?

6.      What do you know about our company?

7.      Why did you decide to seek a job with our company?

8.      Why did you leave your last job?

9.      What do you want to earn five years from now?

10.  What do you really want to do in life?

The answer according to Professor Allen Huffcutt, who has spent years researching the topic, is Question #6. The reason is because it is a fair reflection of the amount of time they spent researching your company.

It is not, however, the best question.

Ironically – and somewhat counter-intuitively – the best question is no question at all. The problem is many people believe they are better judges of character than they actually are. The solution is avoid face-to-face interviews altogether and select candidates on the basis of more objective criteria, including work samples, job-knowledge tests, peer-ratings of past job performance and even simple intelligence test.

If you feel an interview is still necessary, it is suggested that the interview be used only after you have narrowed the field of candidates (using more objective criteria) and then use the interview to “sell” the best candidate on taking the job.

To understand just how difficult it is to unlearn the idea of the importance of the interview, Huffcutt was asked (when being interviewed for the book, Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior) whether his own department had changed any hiring procedures based on his research, he responded, “No … I’ve made some suggestions on how we can do better on interviews, but so far they haven’t been taken.”

Why? Because most people believe, in spite of strong evidence to the contrary, that they are better judges of character than they are in reality. It is something worth unlearning before your company makes its next important hiring decision.

(For related information, read this article in Fast Company entitled “Hold the Interview: Why it may be wiser to hire people without meeting them.”)

Related Posts

Unlearn the Rules (Part 2)

The Future Requires Unlearning

Unlearning Stabilization

Unlearning 101: Lesson #17 -- Unlearn Your Biases

Unlearning 101: Lesson #16 -- Unlearn Your Perspective

Today's addition to my anti-library is Edward De Bono's "Lateral Thinking: Creativity Ste by Step."

Unlearning the Rules (Part 2)

Malcolm Gladwell has an outstanding article in this month's New Yorker entitled "How David Beats Goliath." It is an excellent primer on the concept of unlearning and I can't recommend the article highly enough. If, however, you don't have time to read the full article here's the operative quote: "When underdogs choose not to play by Goliath's rules, they win."

According to some scientific research Gladwell cites, "David's" (i.e the underdog) winning percentage against "Goliath's" increase from 28.5% to 63.6% when they play by unconventional rules!

Think about that for a moment, folks. What the article is really telling us is that if we want to win against a bigger, stronger and more well-funded opponent one of the first things we should do is "unlearn" the rules.

Unlearn Your Parking Habits

Are you one of those people who drives around a parking lot looking for the "perfect spot" in the hopes of saving time and/or effort? Well, if you are it is a habit that you might want to unlearn because it isn't saving you any time.

The following is a passage from the new book by Tom Vanderbilt, "Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What it Says About Us.)":

"Something curious happens in parking lots.  It seems that the people who actively look for the “best” parking space inevitably spend more total time getting to the store than those people who simply grab the first spot they see.

Two distinct strategies were observed:  “cycling” and “pick a row, closest space.”  Although the individuals cycling were spending more time driving looking for a parking space, on average they were no closer to the door, time-wise or distance-wise, than people using “pick a row, closest space.”

Unlearn Experience: Cultivate a Beginner's Mind

Thomas Huxley once encouraged people to: "Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.” I really like this quote because we can all benefit a great deal from "thinking like a child.”

A correlary to this is the idea that “inexperience” is not always a negative characteristic. This is especially true if people’s experience precludes them from understanding how the accelerating pace of technological change might change their future in ways which are completely unexpected or maybe even foreign to them. To this end, I highly recommend this article, entitled "Judgment Trumps Experience,” which appeared in the Wall Street Journal a few months back. One sentence in particular stands out for me. It reads: "And often, especially in today’s dizzying world, we need to understand what Zen Buddists call the ‘beginner’s mind,’ which recognizes the value of fresh insight unfettered by experience.”

It’s a wonderful quote and in today’s “dizzying world” it is more appropriate than ever. Now, if you want to take this message to heart and become what I call an exponential executive, the question you must then ask yourself is this: What are you doing to cultivate your own “beginner’s mind”?