Active vs. Passive Listening

What's up, everyone? Welcome back to another episode of Founders Journal. I'm Alex Lieberman, co-founder and executive chairman of Morning Brew. As I have mentioned, with the new and improved Founders Journal, I'm going to act as your startup Sherpa, curating the best content in the world for entrepreneurs so you don't have to spend the time finding it. I'm going to summarize what I find so you don't have to read it, and I'm going to analyze it so you have actionable takeaways to apply to your business. For today's episode, I'm going to be breaking down a piece by Morgan Housel, who Who is one of my favorite internet writers ever. Morgan is a partner at Collaborative Fund, where he writes a blog 2 times a week, and he's also a New York Times bestselling author of The Psychology of Money, as well as Same as Ever, of which he has sold over 4.5 million copies combined. Now, I'm going to approach this episode and this article a little bit differently than the last few episodes. I am going to read the entire piece through. No interruptions, so you can sit with and think about the content yourself. And then at the very end, I will chime in with a few musings based on my own reactions to the piece. If there is one lesson you take from this amazing essay, it is the importance of embracing wandering and curiosity as you look to grow in life and in work. So let's dive in. Active versus passive learning. January 2nd, 2024, by Morgan Housel. If I asked, which do you think will lead to a healthier, happier relationship? An arranged marriage by someone who doesn't know you, or spending years meeting hundreds of people with different backgrounds, figuring out what you want and don't want, and serendipitously meeting your partner only when you both happen to be ready to settle down? The answer is obvious to me, at least. The first you could call active search. It's managed on a timeline, has rules, and is done whether you're ready or not. The second, let's call passive. You're in control and you let it happen whenever it happens, given what you want and where you are in life. I think the same logic applies to what I've been thinking of as active versus passive learning. I define it like this: active learning— someone tells you what to learn, how to learn it, on a set schedule, on pre-selected standardized topics. Passive learning— you let your mind wander with no intended destination. You read and learn broadly, talk to people from various backgrounds, and stumble haphazardly across topics you had never considered but spark your curiosity, often because it's the topic you happen to need at that specific time of your life. I can't be alone in realizing that most of what I've learned in life has come from passive learning. Something I've learned as a writer is that writing for yourself is fun, and it shows, while writing for other people is work, and it shows. Doing something your way, on your own terms, because it fits your unique personality, is night and day compared with performing for someone else's expectations. Active learning, which you'll recognize as school, not only has a wonderful place in life, but has to be considered One of the greatest achievements of modern times. The problem is assuming it's the only or even the best form of learning. Or more dangerously, people who have only experienced active learning that isn't right for their personality may become convinced that they hate learning, hate reading, hate being curious about the world, and then it spirals down from there. What gets most people's minds moving is stumbling across a niche topic that either fits their unique mind or is a missing puzzle piece for a specific problem they're having in life. It's hard to foster that with active learning. You need to let people's minds wander aimlessly, waiting until they discover what's right for them at the time they need it. I like to keep 2 things in mind. First, don't contain your learning to your own profession or major. Read and learn as broadly as possible. A big part of passive learning is going out of your way to read and learn from the widest variety of topics you can. intentionally looking for similarities between different fields. When you do, you'll be stunned at how easy and fun it is to stumble on a new idea that teaches you how the world works. If you're in business, you'll be shocked at how much you can learn about moats and competitive advantages from biology. If you're in biology, you'll be shocked at how much you can learn about growth limits and evolution from business. One problem with active learning is that it tends to be siloed, with math taught in one department, chemistry in another, English in a different building. It tends to keep topics boring and lacking real-world context. But if you study broadly enough, you'll see how interconnected every field is. Many fields fall under an umbrella of how the world deals with uncertainty and competition. If you find something that is true in more than one field, you've probably uncovered something particularly important. The more fields it shows up in, the more likely it is to be a fundamental driver of how the world works. It's been like that forever. Quote, the world is often wiser than any philosopher, the journalist Walter Bagehot wrote in 1859. David Senra recently summarized Jeff Bezos's mindset. If you're paying attention, the whole world is a classroom, a classroom of passive learning. Let me give you a strange example of how one topic teaches you about another. Neil deGrasse Tyson once asked a group of college professors how much TV they watch. He explained about 15% of the audience actively watched any number of hours of TV per week. At the time, the average person in America watched 30 hours of TV per week. I said to them, how could you possibly claim that you know and understand who you're teaching? They have no idea about the influences going on in the mind of the person who you're trying to teach. Few college history professors think, quote, if I watch South Park, I'll better understand the minds of who I'm teaching and I'll become a better teacher, end quote. And few people watching South Park realize they're actually learning how a big part of society thinks. But that's a quirky example of the kind of broad, multidisciplinary learning that helps you make sense of how the world works. Read broadly, watch broadly, discuss broadly, learn broadly. And second, give employees time to think. Give yourself time to ponder. If you as a boss expect that learning stops at graduation and employees are merely meant to produce work, you will get the kind of employees you deserve. In 1870, 46% of jobs were in agriculture and 35% were in crafts or manufacturing, according to economist Robert Gordon. Few professions relied on a worker's brain. You didn't think, you labored without interruption, and your work was visible and tangible. Today, that is flipped. 38% of jobs are now designated as, quote, managers, officials, and professionals, end quote. These are decision-making jobs. Another 41% are service jobs that often rely on your thoughts as much as your actions. So many of these employees will do better work if they are given time to think, learn, ponder, discuss, and let their minds roam. But they often can't because so many bosses expect them to be at their desk typing, moving a mouse 40 hours a week until age 65. Without time to passively think and learn, Your education stalls between age 18 and 22, most of which likely consisted of active learning. It seems bizarre that as a boss, you should give your employees idle time to do things that don't look like productive work. But so many successful people found their key educational experiences during free time, passively driven by their own curiosity and wandering minds. The differences in outcomes among people with the same formal education are enormous, and a big reason why is that some people find the time to value passive learning and others don't. So that is Active Versus Passive Learning by Morgan Housel. Now I just want to zoom in on a few lines from the essay that got me thinking. The first line is the way in which Morgan defines these 2 phrases, active versus passive learning. As a reminder, what Morgan said is active learning is when someone tells you what to learn how to learn it on a set schedule on preselected standardized topics. And passive learning— you let your mind wander with no intended destination. You read and learn broadly, talk to people from various backgrounds, and stumble haphazardly across topics you had never considered but spark your curiosity, often because it's the topic you happen to need at that specific time of your life. Now, I totally agree with Morgan and the way that he's defined these 2 phrases. But I would actually take it a step further with these definitions. Another way I'd think about active versus passive learning is forced versus free learning. With active learning, you have less control, and that could look like you having to take econ in college your freshman year as a prerequisite to graduate. But it could also look like you feeling like you have to only read business books because you feel like you always need to be studying your craft and being productive when you're reading. Which, by the way, I am literally numero uno in being guilty of doing that. So I think a really important goal for us all is to think about how we can give ourselves the permission to learn more freely and feel less forced in our learning. Now, it won't feel comfortable at first, but in an ironic way, it'll likely be more valuable to your career and to your life. Start with something easy, like listening to a podcast or reading a book that has no obvious benefit to your career. Hardcore History by Dan Carlin is a good choice, or Huberman Lab or Hidden Brain. Those are some good options that will get the juices flowing but aren't obviously going to benefit you in your line of work. Next point I want to zoom in on is Morgan's perspective on doing things for yourself versus others. He said, quote, something I have learned as a writer is that writing for yourself is fun and it shows, while writing for other people is work and it shows. Doing something your way on your own terms because it fits your unique personality is night and day compared with performing for someone else's expectations, end quote. I will say this is one of the hardest parts about being an entrepreneur and specifically a content creator, because while I totally agree with Morgan that writing for yourself and your own intellectual curiosity is so much more fulfilling, I don't think that it's obviously better to write for yourself versus writing for your audience depending on what your goals are. When entrepreneurs are building companies or products, they are taught from day one to be customer obsessed, continuing to talk to customers and understand how they can better solve their problems. Of course, there are cases where the entrepreneur is their own customer, so they can just focus on building a product that they get great benefit from. But that is not always the case. So what I would say is more important than writing for yourself or building for yourself is picking an audience or a customer that you will genuinely enjoy creating something of value for. Now, 2 more thoughts I want to share on this piece before we go. First, I want to go deeper on Morgan's point about studying broadly and then finding connections. He said, quote, one problem with active learning is that it tends to be siloed, with math taught in one department, chemistry taught in another, English in a different building. It tends to keep topics boring and lack real-world context. But if you study broadly enough, you'll see how interconnected every field is. Many fields fall under an umbrella of, quote, how the world deals with uncertainty and competition, end quote. If you find something that is true in more than one field, you've probably uncovered something particularly important. The more fields it shows up in, the more likely it is to be a fundamental driver of how the world works, end quote. So here's how I think about this in context. One of the ways you can create something novel, something new in your industry as a creator or as an entrepreneur for your customers or for your readers is actually not to be novel at all. It is simply to bring an existing idea from another industry that you wandered into, bringing that into your own industry or your own niche, and your niche or your industry has never been exposed to this exact idea. So I'll give you a specific fun example. There is a bakery in Vermont that is called King Arthur Baking Company. It has been around since 1790. It is a $200 million business. But what I actually think is the coolest feature of this brand is this thing called Baker's Hotline, which effectively is a number that anyone in the country can call to talk to professional bakers for any baking questions. You can ask, how do I fix dough that's too wet? Why is my dough not rising? Can you help me save my kid's birthday cake? And Baker's Hotline has 15 professional bakers at all times answering calls 357 days per year. Now, some 200-year-old bakery has nothing to do with me creating content on the internet for entrepreneurs. But Noah does, taking the idea of answering people's burning questions in an intimate way and introducing that to my audience in a way they've never seen. So now I'm thinking about what would it look like to create a startup hotline where any entrepreneur or founder on planet Earth can call a number that I myself or other founders answer to help solve their problems? And now the final, probably most important point for entrepreneurs from this entire essay is close to the end where Morgan Housel says, quote, If you as a boss expect that learning stops at graduation and employees are merely meant to produce work, you will get the kind of employees you deserve. So many of these employees will do better work if they are given time to think, learn, ponder, discuss, and let their minds roam. But they often can't because so many bosses expect them to be at their desk typing, moving a mouse 40 hours a week until age 65. End quote. This is such a classic mistake that founders and managers make. Doing things feels good. Checking things off a checklist feels good. It is oftentimes the thing that got a producer to be promoted to a manager in the first place. But sometimes, and I would say oftentimes, as a leader or a founder or a manager, the best, most productive thing you can do doesn't involve doing at all. Because when you do, you'll always be working Inside of your business. But if you want to step outside and work on your business, deciding where you want to go, what your strategy is, what direction are you pointed, you know, the big decisions that inform what you actually do, you need to give yourself the time to think. And thinking requires that you stop doing. So that is Morgan Housel's recent essay on active listening versus passive listening. If you enjoyed the piece, I highly recommend that you read more of Morgan's posts and check out his books, The Psychology of Money and Same as Ever. Also, let me know how you like this slight episode adjustment of reading the entire piece first and then sharing my thoughts. Shoot me an email to alex@morningbrew.com. And as always, thank you for listening and I'll catch you next episode.