Learning Speed: What Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, And Bill Gates Know That Most People Don’t

medium.com / 21 March 2021

Most people play popular games — games with predefined boundaries that are played in crowded sandboxes. Popular games are often those with the most short-term, concrete rewards. (..) Hidden games are played in sandboxes that people don’t even realize exist. Hidden games have a higher return, but they are more long-term and abstract.

Playing hidden games allows these innovators to walk to their own tune, to make incredible innovations, and to be camouflaged even when they are well known. (..) I associated speed with being hurried, working long hours, low quality work, and feeling overwhelmed. I was wrong. There was a lot of nuance I didn’t appreciate — nuance like the quote below offers. (..) As I dug deeper, I realized that speed isn’t fundamentally about “doing more” or “running faster.” Rather, it is more a way of thinking.

“Be quick, but don’t hurry.” — John Wooden

“For pretty much any technology whatsoever, the progress is a function of how many iterations do you have, and how much progress do you make between each iteration.” - Elon Musk

“Everybody must realize that if you don’t meet customer demand quickly enough, without sacrificing quality, a competitor will.” - Bill Gates

“The only way to win is to learn faster than everybody else.” - Eric Ries

Both learning speed and execution speed are important, but they’re often conflated with each other. This is a big deal. Execution speed is about getting more done by either putting in more resources or by operating more efficiently. Examples of execution speed include:

Working a longer day
Making decisions faster
Finding a tool that helps you work faster
Making sure people aren’t waiting on one another to move forward
Removing a bottleneck in an assembly line

When most people think about speed, they’re really thinking about execution speed. This is why the idea of speed is associated with long hours and hurry. Learning speed is special in two ways:

Higher leverage. You can 10x your learning speed through compounding and better learning techniques. At most, you can 2x how many hours you work.
Fewer sacrifices. When you work too long, you sacrifice your health and relationships with friends and family.

You can increase your learning speed in several ways:

Spending more time learning
Learning knowledge that doesn’t become outdated so your knowledge compounds
Finding breakthrough knowledge in a sea of info overwhelm
Remembering what you learn so you can use it for the rest of your life
Creating an experimentation engine so you can rapidly try new ideas without procrastinating and without taking on huge risk
Systematically identifying and removing your blindspots

#1. The pace of life is increasing, and our pace needs to increase with it or we will be left behind

the rate of paradigm shift in the world is doubling every 10 years. This means that by 2040, the pace will be 4x what it is now. And in 100 years, it will be 1,024x what it is now.

When we are ahead of others, we are in demand, get promoted sooner, and can charge a premium. When we are behind others, we are the first to be let go.

As the world becomes more global and digital, tens of millions of people will realize that they are further behind than they realized and that catching up feels impossible. The solution is to increase your learning speed now and not wait until you are forced to.

#2. Being a little bit faster can be the difference between winning and losing

Being a little bit ahead vs being a little bit behind is the difference between winning and losing. Therefore, be proactive rather than reactive.

#3. Little gains compound into huge gains

Speed matters because small gains often compound into large gains over time. (..) You can think of speed as being the first to release a minimum viable product to a market or to have a new skill that is really valuable to your employer. This is the first-mover advantage. You can also think of it as how quickly you iterate based on feedback from the market. This is the fastest-iterator advantage.

#4. Speed is the underdog’s #1 weapon

The fact that a startup can disrupt a huge company is startling when you think about it. The big company has tens of thousands of the world’s smartest employees, billions of dollars in profit, and a global reputation.

Changing markets create new customer needs. In other words, customers are always open to a better mousetrap.
New technologies create new ways of meeting those needs. Because those technologies are new, individuals who go all-in early can rapidly become world experts.
Startups don’t have sunk costs, and they can rethink how to solve a new customer need from scratch. Then, they can go all-in on the solution and “burn their boats.” For startups, getting the new idea to work is existential, whereas it isn’t for the large company.
Finally, startups can iterate faster than larger companies. Large companies have multiple layers of approvals and have a brand to protect.

#5. The best career opportunities are often time-bound

Tool adoption. If you’re the first to adopt a game-changing technology in your industry or position, you can use that to stand apart.
Investment opportunities. The earlier you get in on a great investment opportunity, the larger the return.
Cultural shifts. The sooner you realize an important cultural trend, the more you are seen as a pioneer rather than as out-of-touch.
Startup opportunities. Bill Gross runs both the longest running technology incubator and also one of the most successful. Of the 150 companies they’ve started, an amazing 45 have gone public. In 2015, Gross did an in-depth analysis to try and understand what separated the winners from the losers. He looked at teams, markets, ideas, funding, business models, and timing. Amazingly, he found that timing was the #1 key.
Social media. When a new social media platform gains traction, new users tend to be looking for people to follow. Furthermore, it is easier to get engagement. As time passes, users start to unfollow more than they follow, because they feel info overwhelm. Also, as the platform monetizes, it reduces organic engagement and offers more and more traffic on a paid basis.
Skills. When a new skill suddenly becomes in demand, there is a shortage of workers to fill that demand. As a result, employees can earn a premium for having that skill. For example, at one point, programmers with experience with autonomous vehicles were worth over $1 million dollars per year to their companies.

Speed is great in theory, but it’s difficult in practice.

On the one hand, if we keep on top of all the latest tools, skills, social media platforms, and investment opportunities, we can quickly become overwhelmed with no time to do our core work. Furthermore, many of the changes we track won’t end up panning out.

If we are too late, we will miss out on the best opportunities. We also risk being considered out of touch. There is one rule that has helped me find the balance between the two poles in my own life. I call it the Hockey Stick Rule. When I see something grow exponentially in the shape of a hockey stick, (..) at the very least I immediately devote 10 hours to truly understanding it before passing judgement on it. This approach helps me understand what’s happening without getting overwhelmed.