Learning from your and others’ experiences

Cankut Durgun
Jul 20, 2017 · 1 min read

There are two ways to learn. The first is from the experiences of others and the second is from your own experiences.

The advantage of the first is that, since multiple people have more experiences than a single individual, you can learn more faster by relying on others’ experiences.

The challenge is that it’s harder to learn from others’ experiences than it is to learn from your own. The reasons for this are that you’re more likely to discount others’ experiences by thinking that they don’t apply to you, and even if you don’t discount them, it’s difficult to internalize the learnings of others’ experiences without having felt the pleasures and pains which result from having lived through them.

In other words, others’ experiences provide breadth while your own experiences provide depth. Once you appreciate the benefits and shortcomings of each, you recognize that both are necessary.


Originally published at Thoughts of a VC.

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