On Humility and Learning

I’m currently listening to Tim Ferris’ podcast episode with Eric Ripert, chef and co-owner of Le Bernardin, one of New York’s top restaurants.

In one part of the episode Ripert talks about what he looks for in his hires (his cooks). Of the various things he mentioned, what he said about humility stood out most for me.

On humility, Ripert said:

Being humble is very important because it allows you to keep yourself curious and motivated. If your ego is in the way it makes you blind and you’re not inclined to learn, because you “already know” or you don’t want to show your weakness.

When I first started my career, I tended to take advice very willingly. I was young and new to this “work” thing.

Then I started getting pretty good at my job and got a little carried away.

Being technically better than most of the people whom I worked for or with, I thought that technical expertise translated into every other aspect of the job and stopped listening to “suggestions for improvement”.

But then something happened: my progress slowed. I stopped learning.

I went back to soliciting for advice from people I respected, people whom I knew were smart and had tons more experience than I had.

To be honest though, despite my inclination to once again seek “advice” I wasn’t truly convinced I needed it. So, being quite the nerd. I started keeping track of how the times I thought the advice would be poor advice (vs. my own judgement) and recorded the outcome, which could be either positive or negative.

If the advice given to me was better than what I would have done without the advice, the advice would be marked as having had a positive impact. If the advice was worse, it would be marked as having had a negative impact.

The result? The solicited advice was overwhelming positive.

I found I was wrong in almost all instances. My judgement was poor as hell, and I didn’t know it!

(Well, my judgement has improved considerably since then. But do still take advice though, especially in areas where I’m no expert.)