Years ago, when I was walking across Turkey, I adopted a phrase: “Every day be born a dumbass anew.” It doesn’t mean forget all the stuff you’ve learned, it just means put that stuff aside for the moment, confident that it’ll still be there if you need it, and let the world speak to you as it is, not as you think it is.
That’s a hard thing to do. Even now, more than 10 years later, I still struggle with it every single day. I don’t think it ever comes naturally, because the human brain (of which I have one) just won’t allow it. The brain is always yelling at us, “No, I understand the world, listen to me, I’m right, I’m always right!”
That reminds me of Berk Temuroglu talking about unknown unknowns. Notice that in the podcast short below, when he uses the phrase “constant pitching mindset,” he isn’t talking about turning into one of those people who is always persuading, or ABCing (Always Be Closing), or turning yourself into a used car salesman piling on the hard-sell so you can unload that junker you just know is going to develop transmission problems in about a month.
No, he’s talking about being comfortable with what he (and Donald Rumsfeld) call “unknown unknowns,” and being aware that they are always around you, but that you, by definition, don’t even know they are there, or what they will be when they show up.
BTW, just a little test on this subject, in case you’re overestimating your ability to predict the future: How many of us knew, at the end of February 2020, that the world would shut down in about a month?
Another BTW, the discussion of “unknown unknowns” reminds me of an excellent couple of books, I highly recommend them if you are the reading sort: “The Black Swan” and “Antifragile” by Nassim Nicolas Taleb. And no, by The Black Swan I don’t mean the movie with Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis (an excellent movie, although any movie with those two in it is bound to be good, and how could anything with Mila Kunis not be awesome? She could cook eggs and I’d think it was fascinating.).
Anyway, before I get lost in this tangled web of by-the-ways and tangential comments… that right there, becoming comfortable with the unknown unknowns, is probably the single most powerful presentation technique I’ve ever seen.
