The prophet
I have a good friend. Her name is Robbie.
How do you ensure you stay curious and teachable?
Fintech veterans will probably know her. Newbies may not. She has left the ‘circuit’ and has been in deep execution mode for a while. As we all should. But luckily for me our friendship has outlived the circumstances of our meeting, reminding me at all times of all things good and wholesome about friendship, humanity and our industry on a really good day. And that is the opportunity to be nudged to be a better version of our work and ourselves and our organisations and our society.
If it sounds like a lot, it both is… and isn’t.
The incident I am about to describe took place over a year ago and the reason it has taken me so long to write about it is because I had no intention of writing about it. But I have thought about it so often and so much since it happened that I have to accept that Robbie has, once again, lived up to her name, for she is after all called the prophet (literally).
Because she gave me something to think about that will stay with me for years to come.
The conversation was flowing. There was wine. There was food (oh my god, the food). And I don’t even remember how I got to saying, rather flippantly, “I just cannot bring myself to be excited about the metaverse,” and Robbie just as flippantly told me, “That’s because you are getting old and although it’s a normal default mode for humans, you of all people can’t let it make learning hard, because then the game is up.”
Now. Before you rush to tell me I am wrong about the metaverse or to defend my youthfulness…
I have read Ready Player One and it scares me. My brain synapses go to a dark place of haptic suits and dissociated living in the Oasis. And we talked about that for a while. But this is neither a piece about the metaverse nor was our chat actually about the metaverse.
It was about resistance to new things. Not slightly fresh things. But radically new things.
And Robbie’s point is a very valid one.
Age is a critical factor in our receptiveness to new and unfamiliar ideas.
So.
How do you make sure that you are not interested in the metaverse (or whatever, let’s not get hung up on it) because you are just not interested, rather than resisting it because it’s unfamiliar? How do you satisfy yourself that you are genuinely not interested rather than in denial?
It’s a very good question and not an easy one to answer.
What gets in the way of us staying curious and teachable? It’s not a rhetorical question. And I am not sure it’s all about your frontal lobe or whatever. I mean… I am sure there are medical answers to this but, empirically, I see people all around me falling into three categories.
The first is people who don’t even notice stuff. The second is people who notice stuff but largely ignore it and who resist learning new things until there is no choice… you’d be amazed how many Greeks learned how to use digital payments when capital controls came into effect and how quickly my mum worked out how Netflix works when lockdown started.
Both things were ‘impossibly technical and confusing’ the day before they weren’t.
And the third category? People who go, “Cool!” when they encounter something new. Cool! I like it. What is it? How does it work? Can I poke it and see if it goes boing?
Now. Nobody will be excited about everything. Even at your most enthusiastic, you will not be interested in everything. I cannot bring myself to care about cars, I cannot stay alert and focused for a full game of football and I do not have any interest in learning German. I would love to know German already, but I am not going to spend the time learning it, I have decided. I understand that is a choice I am making and I am OK with it.
Luckily for me, most Germans speak English or French or Italian. Some even speak Greek spectacularly well, so I communicate with them. Me not learning German leaves a lot out of reach, of course. Some of the world’s best literature, for example. But it’s not life limiting.
You can see where I am going with this, right?
As the technological landscape matures at an unprecedented pace, there are things that we don’t have the luxury of not learning.
Technophobes are being left behind. As are people who don’t have access to a smartphone and network.
And at work?
When a million things come at you on a daily basis, and you are tired and you are time-poor and you are just in need of a little bit of peace and quiet… how do you ensure you stay curious? How do you make sure you stay teachable?
Humility is key, obviously. Learning is humble work because it comes with admitting that there are things you don’t know, accepting you will be wrong a lot till you learn these new things and embracing the fact that there are things worth knowing that you don’t currently know. At work and at home.
You need to allow yourself to accept that you won’t be good at everything and you won’t be interested in everything, but you also need to keep pushing yourself to not allow that bucket of things you are not interested in, things you dismiss as things you can live without, things you don’t care about or things that are not worth knowing… you need to make sure that bucket doesn’t get too big or over-full.
Because life won’t wait for you if you fall behind. Neither will the workplace, for better or for worse.
And staying teachable is the biggest skill you can retain for the years ahead. As there will always be more to know and more to learn and some of it you won’t like one bit. Because it makes you feel uncomfortable, like me and the metaverse. Because it’s too unfamiliar, too complicated, too… new.
And when that comes you may be tempted to dismiss it as not worth learning about.
For those moments, surround yourself with friends who remind you to learn and learn and learn.
Even if you don’t always like the process or what it is you need to find space in your head for.
Find your prophet.
You never know when you will need to be reminded of the most salient things in life. You never know when you may need someone to point out the thing that may get in the way in the most helpful way before it does.
#LedaWrites
Leda Glyptis is FinTech Futures’ resident thought provocateur – she leads, writes on, lives and breathes transformation and digital disruption.
She is a recovering banker, lapsed academic and long-term resident of the banking ecosystem. She is chief client officer at 10x Future Technologies.
Leda is also a published author – her first book, Bankers Like Us: Dispatches from an Industry in Transition, is available to order here.
All opinions are her own. You can’t have them – but you are welcome to debate and comment!
Follow Leda on Twitter @LedaGlyptis and LinkedIn.
