Day 10 | Mindset at work: you don't have to be the smartest person in the room

Some thoughts after listening to an industry veteran share his experience.

Afterwards I kept thinking that a person's value has a lot to do with their passion for an industry and their curiosity about it.

Work always brings things you don't know well. As the problems pile up and the fields you touch get wider, it gets harder to expect that you'll have the answer ready every time. How you see your own gaps at those moments, and whether you're willing to keep learning, shapes how you work next.

If you don't know it, learn as you go

He said he doesn't care about the things he doesn't know. As a boss there was a lot he didn't know either. He often learned on the job, feeling his way across the river one stone at a time.

The way I understood it: you can admit plainly that you don't know yet. Every day he collected what he learned in a notebook, sorted it out at home in the evening, and typed it into the computer on weekends. He kept that up, day after day, for 40 years.

Once you admit you don't know, the problem has a chance to be stated clearly, and you know what to fill in next.

"Learn by doing, do while you learn" is something you hear a lot, but in real work it has many details. Before you start, some questions can only be roughly thought through. Once you actually start, you find which conditions you missed and where things differ from what you expected. When you go back to learn then, what you learn has a concrete place to be used.

To me, this also shows why curiosity matters. When you hit something you don't understand, if you still want to know why it works that way, you're more willing to keep asking.

Someone who has served different industries faces different problems and situations. Hearing him talk about learning on the job, what I cared about more was this willingness to keep understanding things. Even with a lot of experience behind him, there are still new things to learn, and he is still willing to learn them. (The key point: his background is in materials, yet he led a family business through a transformation in scale.)

I hope I can keep this mindset too. If I'm interested in a field, I'm willing to spend a bit more time understanding it. When I run into something I didn't know, I can treat it as the next question to figure out.

Not necessarily the smartest person in the room

Many bosses, when they share their stories, say they aren't necessarily the smartest person in the room. What I heard was that they know how to adjust their mindset and the way they work, so things keep moving toward the goal.

It made me think that between "knowing a lot" and "getting things done" there is still work you have to actually do.

Once you know a method, you have to judge whether it fits the situation in front of you. Once you start, you have to see whether the result matches what you expected. If there's a gap, you have to ask whether there's something you haven't understood yet, or whether the original approach needs adjusting. All of this takes judgment along the way.

That's why I paid close attention to what he said about adjusting. With experience, you still have to look at what problem you're facing now. Once you've picked a direction, you still have to watch the results as you go. Being able to change how you work is part of getting the goal done.

Looking back, you don't have to know the answer in every discussion to be able to take part. You can first ask about what's unclear, understand how others do it, and then decide what you'll do next. Being willing to learn this way is what leaves room to adjust how you work.

Life means more than the money you make

Besides work, he also talked several times about life, family and happiness. Sometimes these matter far more than the money you make.

This part made me feel that talking about your mindset at work also means looking back at what kind of life you want.

We can spend a lot of time thinking about how to reach goals and do things well, but our own state of mind and the time we spend with family also need real time and care. If you always wait until work settles down to deal with them, life easily keeps getting pushed back.

After today's talk, I want to remind myself to put life into the schedule too. The things I want to do, the people I want to spend time with, and the time that makes me happy all deserve to be taken seriously.

The passion and curiosity about an industry I mentioned earlier can go into life as well. Beyond the problems at work, is there still something about the world, about everyday life, that I want to understand? Am I willing to set aside some time for the things I'm interested in?

This veteran talked a lot about his work experience today, and what I want to take home includes how to look after my own state of mind. At work, keep learning and keep adjusting, and do the things I want to do well. In life, spend a bit more time on family, on happiness, and on the things I care about.