Learning with an Infinite Mindset | Simon Sinek & Jim Kwik

Welcome back, Kwik Brain. So we are back with bestselling author and eternal optimist Simon Sinek. Thank you, buddy.

Good to see you.

This is the 3rd conversation that we're having on The Infinite Game. The first one— I highly recommend you listen to the first 2. The first one was how to live with an infinite mindset, and then it was how to lead with this infinite mindset. And now the third one, I wanna talk about learning, because obviously you're a big fan of learning if you're listening or watching this. How do you learn with an infinite mindset? So this is the conversation. And this is a new topic. I wanna, I wanna apply, um, people have already listened to previous episodes. They know they, they have a definition of the, the finite game and the infinite game. We went through the 5 practices, uh, in the last episode. And I want to take those 5 practices and see if we can map it on learning and the importance of learning along with leadership and living also as well.

Yeah, I mean, this is fun. I haven't done this, so this will be— we're pioneering right now.

Okay, so, um, when we're talking about learning as an individual or learning organizations and we're going through the 5 different practices, when we're thinking about the first one, like a just cause, how would that— how can that apply towards Towards learning.

So I think people who, who view learning only as a means to an end, you know, which is I need to get an A so that I can get the best job, you know, I need to come in first because I want to be better than everybody else, you know, when we view learning as a finite game, then what we're doing is we learn to take the test for the grade, not learn to take the test to learn actually, to learn the subject. And we all know these tricks, you know, you study differently for a multiple-choice test than you do for an essay test. You know, because you don't actually have to know the subject, you have to recognize the answers. And so to learn with an infinite mindset is, I want to learn because I want to be the best version of myself so that I can contribute even more to the world and the lives of the people around me. There's a purpose rather than individual achievement for the learning. I think that would be approaching learning with an infinite mindset, which is, I choose to learn so that I can give even more, uh, to the world around me.

See, that inspires me, because if I imagine a world where people have stepped into their genius and they have, they have access to an incredible potential, what an amazing world that would be.

Exactly. I mean, it's why you do what you do. So, uh, so, so yeah, I think that, that's what it would be to, uh, advance, to think of learning with it with an infinite mindset. We know what happens in the extreme when we approach learning with a finite mindset, we're seeing it play out with the university admission scandals.

Mm-hmm.

Where these well-intentioned parents think that it's a good idea to bribe university officials.

Right.

Because if I get— and the logic is, if I get my kid into the best universities, it'll set them up for life. Except for the fact that they're gonna struggle at those universities because they're not qualified to go to them, and you actually lied to get them in. You know, every parent wants the best for their children, but the way to do that is to help the kids learn so that they can achieve these things themselves, which builds self-confidence, it builds learning, it builds education. In other words, they weren't treating education with an infinite mindset. It wasn't about the learning and the self-improvement. It was simply a finite mindset. It was all transactional. It was about achievement and status. So that's what happens in the extreme when we approach education with a finite mindset.

Yeah. Mm-hmm. I just got— I call them goosebumps, but I call them truth bumps.

That's— I like that.

Number 2, the second practice.

Yeah.

So when we're taking this, the second practice of building trusting teams.

Yeah, I think building trusting teams is essential if you think about learning because, you know, none of us can really learn alone. I mean, you can read books, right? But true learning doesn't just happen from taking in information. It comes from discussing information. It comes from— we need to have teachers. We need to have people to write the books, but we need to have teachers. We need mentors. We need mentees. We need people that we can pass on. We need students. And I think it's these, you know, I think one of the weaknesses in modern education is we think that we can replace a teacher with, uh, with a website, right, with an app. And we think that we can get as good an education through online learning as we can through old-fashioned classroom learning? And the answer is yes, we can. We may be able to achieve the same grade on the test, but the, the, the, the art of learning, the debate, the discussion, the ability to raise your hand and disagree requires the relationship with another person. And the teachers that we loved growing up in high school or college or younger, the teachers that we learned the most from were teachers that we felt cared about us, that they felt— that we felt that when we struggled, they said, come on, you can do this. They believed in us. We've forgotten a lot of our teachers, but the ones we remember are the ones that, quite frankly, built these trusting teams.

Mm-hmm.

They allowed us to ask difficult questions and not be humiliated, you know? So I think building trusting teams is absolutely essential for learning. People want to— do we have relationships that people want to engage with us? about things that are academic or practical. So I think trusting teams is absolutely essential, which then leads to worthy rivals, which I think is also really interesting if we think about in terms of education, which is who's better at the subject that we're trying to advance our own knowledge of than we are that we could learn from, rather than prove that we're smarter than they are, cite more studies than they can cite. brag that we read more books on the subject than they have. You know, who's, who's at— who's better than us at something that we can learn from? Or, or that their, their strengths reveal to us our weaknesses of a new direction to learn or a new way to learn? Uh, I think it's actually really interesting. It just— I think worthy rivals will help us reveal new ways in which we can take in information.

And those rivals, it's interesting that rivals and also those trusted teams, it's social. Solo, you can learn solo, but you can learn even better social.

I think so. I mean, you're the expert, so I mean, is that true?

This is absolutely true.

Okay, so then yes.

And number 4, the 4th practice.

The existential flexibility? I think that one's also really interesting in that one, which is if we've gone down a path of learning in one direction, are we willing to blow it up? Are we willing to say— and by the way, it has to be purposeful. It can't be—

Just for the sake of it.

This movement of saying, you know, University, college is bad, don't go to college.

Right.

Well, maybe. You know, I think that, you know, do you need all the subjects you learn at college? No. Some of the people who tell us we don't need to go to college, they made their billions, and that's why they dropped out of college, you know? But it's not just information we're learning at college. We're learning independence from our parents. We're learning self-reliance. We're learning self-confidence. We're learning how to develop human relationships. We're learning human interaction. We're learning how to deal with conflict with peers. We're learning how to make choices for ourselves. We're learning social interaction. We're learning stress management. We're learning— I mean, we're learning so much more than the classes. I can tell you my own college education, the stuff that I studied, you know, yeah, some of it applies to my life today, and I learned some stuff that was really valuable today. But what I learned that had nothing to do with the classroom environment because I went to college was I wouldn't be where I am today without it, not to mention just some of the friendships that, you know, people who've been there for me now since I graduated college and continue to be in my life and believe in me and support me and allow me an opportunity to support them. Those friendships have been essential in my journey. But I think there's something very interesting about the willingness to to make a 180-degree turn and say— I'll give you a great example. So we're told that the way you learn is to study by rote. This is how people learn, you know? And you study the books. And there are people who are smarter and who understand pedagogy more than we do, use big fancy words like pedagogy, you know? And they tell us, this is how you're gonna learn. And the, to learn how we learn, and the willingness to make sudden departures that come with risk, because I learn better this way. I went through this in college myself, which is I realized I was a terrible, I was terrible at reading. Couldn't, I couldn't learn from reading. So originally I took all my, I chose all my classes based on workload, 'cause I was lazy. And I got such bad grades because I wasn't learning anything, because even though the workload was low, the teachers were terrible. And so the next semester, I picked all my classes based on the teacher rating regardless of the workload, and I took some classes that just were way too much work, but the teachers were so good because I need to learn by listening. I needed really passionate, invested teachers who invested in me and the classroom and their subject. They weren't just going through the motions, right? So I needed great teachers because that's how I learn. So I had to abandon one system to choose another. And even test-taking— I didn't like book learning. I liked understanding. So I would take classes where I could write papers instead of take tests because it suited my personality. It suited my, my style of learning. But I had to make these choices to abandon what I was being told and how I would do well in the world to take the risk To take classes that suited me, even though to everybody else, it was crazy. It's a little less than existential flexibility, but I think it makes the point.

And finally, last practice, courage.

Again, you know, it's more exciting to just be finite and be transactional about these things. And to commit oneself to a lifetime of learning, that sounds like a long time. So it's a commitment to a lifetime of learning, understanding that it's really, really good to be the dumbest person in the room sometimes. You know, as much as it feels nice to be the smartest person in the room, but it's so much more valuable to be the dumbest person in the room and to learn the courage to raise your hand and say, uh, I don't understand. Can somebody please explain this in a different way? And amazingly, when you do that, when you have that courage, the number of people that also raise their hand and say, yeah, I don't understand either. Congratulations, you're a leader, because you went first into the unknown. So I think the courage to— courage in learning is the willingness to admit you don't know something. We all lie. We all do this. You know, somebody says, you know, have you read this book? Or do you know this author? Or do you know this subject? And we go, uh-huh, or a little. when the answer is, never heard of him, right?

Mm-hmm.

Do you understand this? Have you ever seen this video? No, don't know her, you know, is really powerful. Nope, never seen it in my life. Don't know.

That takes huge courage.

We're gonna be humiliated. We're sitting in a meeting, they're asking us a direct question, you know, did you read the materials? And we have to go, nope. Well, I skimmed through them. Lie.

Right.

You know, um, it takes courage to say I don't know, and sometimes we'll get humiliated, but sometimes they're just asking us to find out a baseline of how much we know so they can tell us everything else, and if we lie, they won't tell us everything.

Yeah, when I hear the words like encouragement, you know, somebody that's giving, helping somebody have courage, or humiliated, I'm thinking about humility.

Yeah.

It takes a lot of humility to say that I don't know this. And as well as a lot of courage also as well.

So I think, I think it's fun. I've never thought about this, but I absolutely think the 5 practices map over, um, over learning. And I'll tell you one big one, which is just the mindset of learning, which I learned from you. You don't know this. I've never told you this. Okay. So I am terrible at names. I, I've always been terrible at names, and I just can't remember people's names, and it's caused me so much embarrassment, you know, because I'll forget people's names that I'm supposed to know. And I've told you this, and you said to me, no, you're good at names. You've just convinced yourself that you're bad at names because you don't have a reason to be good at names. Do you have a reason to be good at names? And I realized that when I meet people, um, it makes them feel that I, I feel connected to them. They feel connected to me, and I feel connected to them if I can remember their name. And that one insight that you gave me, you know, not even any of the tricks of like staring at their face and like, well, you know, but, but now it turns out I'm actually really good at names because I have a reason to remember people's names. I, I, I thought, I thought it was a brain thing. It was a mindset thing. So yeah, thanks to you, Jim. I'm now really good at names.

Thank you so much for sharing that, because I feel like this is something that somebody's watching or listening to this right now that it It just opens up more possibility in terms of what's fixed and what actually is—

I thought my brain was wired that it couldn't remember names. Turns out I was completely wrong.

Yeah. The, um, I want to talk about education real quick because sometimes people use the word education and learning interchangeably, and sometimes it's institutionalized education. But what also is a finite game is school, where it just, it ends. Like, you go through—

School is absolutely a finite game. There's a beginning, middle, and end.

Yep. Exactly. No matter how many—

And you can come in first. Yes, there are agreed-upon metrics and there's agreed-upon timeframes.

But then eventually when you get to a certain level, whether it's graduate school or some kind of MBA or doctorate, then it ends, right? But learning never ends.

Learning is infinite. School is finite, learning is infinite, 100%.

I love that distinction. Where can people get the book again?

You know, wherever you like to buy books, you know, fine bookstores and some not so fine ones.

I think bookstores— I mean, there's a difference.

Booksellers, we call them booksellers.

Exactly. It's 2 different, like, behaviors, buying a book and actually reading that book. So I would encourage everybody to, to not only buy The Infinite Game, but also to read that book.

It does make a very good coaster as well for the people who don't want to read it.

It's a great-looking book.

Just saying, it's a good coaster.

I don't— I just don't think people get credit for just having it sit on the shelf.

You never know.

Everybody, we're actually going to give a signed copy away of The Infinite Game. This is Simon's latest book. And all you have to do is take a screenshot of this episode or of this podcast as you're listening to it and tag Simon, tag myself, and share your big aha. Share your big takeaway because when you— if you want to learn something better, you teach it to somebody else because you get to learn it twice. So share one thought that you got out of this conversation. Post it. I'll repost some of my favorites.

Awesome.

And we'll send a book to one of you. So thanks again, Simon.

Thanks, Jim.

Hi, Kwik Brain. It's your brain coach. I want to thank you so much for watching this video. 3 things to do. Number 1, make sure you share this, because when you teach something, you get to learn it twice. Update your learning so you can update other people's learning as well. Number 2, make sure you subscribe to this channel so you don't miss a thing, because if you miss a video, you miss a lot. And finally, make sure you hit that bell so you're Notified and you find out when we put out the latest and the greatest. One extra thing, if you want really close attention, then text me. Here is my phone number: 310-299-9362. Did you remember that number? 310-299-9362. Shoot me a text And we'll stay in touch. Ask me your burning question, and I wish your days be full of lots of life, lots of love, lots of laughter, and always lots of learning. I'll see you in our next video.