Learning in Politics

For my day job, I’m a political consultant, which means that I work directly with candidates to help them get elected. Because of that connection, I also happen to know a lot of people who are really experienced in tackling huge endeavors. These are the kind of people that live, sleep, and eat politics. They know how to research and message, and they know how to network and build coalitions. Despite all of that, I don’t know a single person who can wake up tomorrow morning and say, “I’m going to change the world, and it’s going to be super easy!” Big things require a lot of learning and so do new things. I often find when I start something new that I don’t even know what I don’t know. I have to start researching and working just to find out how I’ll need to learn and improve to achieve the larger goals. If we want to be more effective in politics (and in life) we need to take every opportunity to learn grow and improve.

There are a lot of principles and applications that can improve our learning from study tips to research methods, but I want to focus on some mindsets that I think will help us the most.

The first of those is the importance of humility. Socrates once said:

None of us are omniscient, and on the grand cosmic scale, none of us are even that smart. Compared to a universe’s worth of knowledge, our knowledge is almost nothing. Most of us struggle to understand what our friends are thinking; much less what people are thinking across the political divide, or what the perfect solution is to some hyper-complex set of problems like immigration. That being the case, we need to realize that we have a long way to go if we want to know enough to have a real impact on the world. Adopting this mindset allows us to remain teachable. It humbles us so that we’re willing to accept the truth whenever it comes our way.

While I believe in absolute truth, I also understand that my knowledge is often incomplete and falls short of that standard. That being the case, I find it useful to view knowledge as a tool. If I need to pound a stake into the ground and all I have a a lumpy rock as my tool to get it done, I might succeed, but there’s a good chance I hurt a finger or mess up the stake. A mallet would be much better, but even then, other conceivable tools might do the job in an even better way. In the same way, incomplete knowledge might allow me to get the job done but it definitely won’t do it as efficiently as if I had perfect knowledge of absolute truth. Adopting this mindset allows me to not get too attached to the things I think I know. Instead, I’m able to constantly search for better tools in the hopes that I might one day discover and utilize perfect tools.

Building upon that principle is my belief that we should learn from everything and everyone. In my political consulting, my specialty is data. I collect, organize, and analyze data, and then use that information to create strategy. Just yesterday I came across a fellow that the campaign hired that I was worried would take my job. I do data, but he does data. He leverages AI and machine learning models to do projects in hours that might take me weeks manually. In the context of the previous principle, I’m using a mallet and he has a button that uses telekinesis to put all of the stakes everywhere all in the perfect places. Now I could have easily decided to downplay what he’s doing in an attempt to protect my job, but that’s not useful. If I want to be a better campaigner and if I’m dedicated to getting my candidate into office, I need to pick up his tool. Bringing this full circle, It’s easy to decide not to learn from people who we deem as threatening, unknowledgeable, or unlikeable, but that’s not helpful.

If we have big goals and want to change the world, we need to be humble, search for better knowledge, and accept it wherever it comes. When we do this we accelerate our ability to learn and grow to meet every challenge we face. Having the right mindset helps us have confidence in doing new things because we know that we’ll be able to figure out all the hidden challenges ahead.

Key Takeaways

• Accept that you don’t know everything and that you have room to improve.

• Knowledge is a tool. Always search for better tools.

• Accept truth wherever it comes from