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Activating Learning Mindset with Simon Sinek

Simon is an unshakable optimist who believes in a bright future and our ability to build it together.

Described as “a visionary thinker with a rare intellect,” Simon teaches leaders and organizations how to inspire people. With a bold goal to help build a world in which the vast majority of people wake up every single day feeling inspired, feel safe at work, and feel fulfilled at the end of the day, Simon is leading a movement to inspire people to do the things that inspire them.

Simon is the author of multiple best-selling books including Start With Why, Leaders Eat Last, Together is Better, and The Infinite Game.

"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."

SIMON SINEK

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LEARNING WITH AN INFINITE MINDSET

  • When we view learning as a finite game, we learn to take the test for the grade rather than to learn the subject.
  • “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.”
  • An infinite approach to learning is about having a purpose for learning outside of individual achievement e.g. you might want to choose to learn a subject so you can give even more to the world.
  • An extreme example of what happens when we approach education with a finite mindset is playing out in the college admissions scandal: education becomes about achievement and status, rather than learning and giving.

BUILDING TRUSTING TEAMS

  • None of us can learn alone: true learning doesn’t happen from taking in information, it comes from discussing information, for which we need a classroom and teachers.
  • In modern education, we think that we can replace a teacher with a website or an app, and get as good an education through online learning over old-fashioned classroom learning.
  • We may be able to achieve the same grade on the test using online methods, but the art of learning is lost—the classroom debate and discussion which requires a relationship with another person.
  • The teachers we learned the most from were the ones who we felt cared about us, believed in us and encouraged us. They built trusting teams where we were allowed to ask difficult questions and not feel humiliated.

WORTHY RIVALS

  • Who is better at the subject that we are trying to advance our knowledge in? How and what can we learn from them?
  • Looking at their efforts can reveal our own weaknesses and reveal new ways to learn and take in information.

EXISTENTIAL FLEXIBILITY

  • If we’ve gone down a path of learning in one direction, are we willing to blow it up and make a 180 degree turn to follow another path?
  • It’s not just information we’re learning at college. We are also learning self-reliance, self-confidence, how to develop human relationships, how to deal with conflict, how to make choices for ourselves, stress management—and so much more.
  • The things you learn outside of your subjects at college, and the friendships you build there, will stay with you throughout your life.
  • Simon was terrible at learning through the accepted way of studying by rote and reading. One semester, he chose his classes based solely on teacher ratings and found that despite the workloads being high, he learned better.
  • Abandoning the accepted knowledge of studying by rote being the best way to learn was a risk for Simon—he took the risk of taking classes to suit his own learning style, and it paid off.

COURAGE

  • It is more exciting to be finite and transactional—committing yourself to a lifetime of learning sounds like a long time.
  • School is a finite game—it has a set timeline, and there are agreed metrics through which you can come in first, but learning never ends and is infinite.
  • Understand that it’s really good to be the dumbest person in the room sometimes. It might feel nice to be the smartest, but it’s so much more valuable to be the dumbest.
  • It takes courage to put up your hand and say you don’t understand something. Chances are others will raise their hands too—and then you become a leader, because it was you who went first into the unknown.
  • Courage in learning is the willingness to admit you don’t know something.
  • Sometimes you’ll get humiliated for admitting it, but sometimes the person asking is just asking what you know to establish a baseline of your knowledge.
  • You can change your mindset about learning. Simon believed he was wired to not remember names, but after Jim told him that he had just convinced himself he was bad at remembering them, he found a reason to learn them and became much better at remembering names.
  • Simon’s reason for learning names was to feel connected to other people, and to have them feel connected to him.

SIMON’S BOOKS

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