What Should I Learn From The Beginning?

What should I learn from the beginning?

A question from common new students that expected to be answer perfectly. Each people have one life, unreversed times, and chances in the future depends on how we spent the past.

Currently, I am reading a book "Range" by David Epstein. Previously, I just finished my first stoic book "How to Be A Stoic" by Massimo Pigliucci. It is like pouring water to a small tube with a bucket. Then, I decided to looking around with a mind "I think I wanna buy something lighter".

I was looking around in the book store for an hour. Picking every books that pulsing my slight interests. Biography, history, crypto, investment, environment even book about how to understand woman. After an hour, I had two books in my hands ready to head down to the cashier but my inner thought said "we have so much times, lets do an another lap."

I had seen the book every time I passed the aisle, but in the last lap, I decided to read the backside. "Range" was not a title that I found stimulate my interest. It just a word, it can mean everything. That was my thought before 10 minutes bringing the book down.

Generally, the book tells about how generalist can compete in the world where specialist seems to be the only role to survive in this world.

Well, the first minute when I read the books, I had a far flashback and found my past thoughts about early years of college in the book. That is why I want to share how I made my upgrading plan for myself.

The first mindset that I choosed back then is "I don't think I have anything to be proud of myself in the past. I will start a new page in the college. I can be anything". The first chance that came was leader election. For someone who never had leadership experiences, why do I have any interest to participate? 

But, I decided to take it because a new page is not supposed to have same scratch. In the book, when David tells about Frances Hesselbein stories. There is a short story about a person who dissapointed because he didn't get any benefit from a kind of forum. Later then, ther is my favorite quote that tells "Someone need to bring a big basket to bing back something home."

Entering the college, the new page mindset actually brings a huge mentality to take any chances or I can say to take any risks. I didn't know what I like. I didn't know what I need. I had talk to many people to suggest what should I do or what could I become but it never had a perfect acceptance for me (even sometimes suggestions sound discouraging). But, I believe or maybe I know that there is something in me that will suit to a role or field. I just what is it, so I try everything. I took every (limited) chances that came , I tried many lateral roles, and It spent almost two years resulting zero awards, undepth technical skills, and also a lot of overthinking because not all the task went well (It always my first time, what do you expect?).

Right now, I realize that it taught me a skill that actually an important skill for my next years. Curiousity, quick learning, connecting dots, and most important one is an endurence to learn new things. Sometimes when we see older people, we might see a tendency to stop learning. But, I believe to survive on this future challenges, we need to have the skill to "face everything". If I'm not mistaking on the translate, the book called it as "uncertain" or "deceitful" world (I read it in Bahasa). Refering to an understanding that how accurate we predict or prepare for the future, the reality seems always bringing challenges, and often cannot be solved.

The skills to face everything actually mentioned (as I am interpreting it) in different ways in some books that I've read. In simple terms, the point is we need to be a liquid. We need to expect ourself facing something that cannot be solved by our experiences. It means that we need to start to explore new knowledge or even new fields. Experiences in many fields can become a major factor to boost our value (as many stories in the book comparing how people upgrade themselves with as specialist or generalist, both have their own role in the field). But, sometimes people are too afraid to become generalist. Because the path contains starting from zero including learning basics while competing people with specialization. The eager to do so sometimes clogged up as we think that we have studied enough and expecting to just repeat what we had done.

For me, I would assume that the experiences I have in early years of college bring the sense of how generalist develop their skill. After those years, the experencies benefit my upgrading process during college. Curiousity and endurance to learn new skill.make every new tasks from new subjects become fun to explore.

Lateral knowledge as mentioned in the book, can become the key to inovation and creativity. I can't agree more. In scientific article competition, I saw many ideas that combine unexpected fields. It became creative because no one didn't think about it. Ideas always come with combining something out of the static condition. Experiences in multiple fields can open up chances to create creativity.

It also boost my mentality to face new challenges. Just like a game (MOBA especially) where we repeat the same start-from-zero process in battlefield over and over again. We are not scared by any new enemies and keep on going. We don't think about winning or losing. We don't think about "can I do it or not?". Even though we are losing in the end of the challanges, we don't give up and afraid to start over again. It's kind of a "Nothing to lose" mentality.

So, to answer the main question, I will say "I don't know what you become in the future, I can't predict what you become in the future, I don't want to decide what you become in the future, but whatever it is I believe that you need to learn endurence to learn new things. We need to be ready and open up for new knowledge."