Because platitudes like “failure is the best teacher” and “all learning is good learning” abound — and because most people carry a lot of emotional baggage on the topic of learning — one must be careful to also understand the following: - as such, some learning is better than no learning - sure, a lot of learning happens on the job, by doing, but by definition that will not be enough for already-competent & ambitious people - ultimately the main goal of learning is to use it to achieve what you want. so, very logically, if you discriminate based on personal quirks (e.g. “I don’t like the title of this book”, “I don’t like the company this person worked for”, etc.) you are probably not optimally setting yourself up to achieve what you want - a corollary to the previous point is that creating a whole identity around being ”a lifelong learner” in practice will tend to get in the way of you achieving what you want in your life. reason is that many people implement this philosophy by always trying to learn, and using learning as an excuse to avoid taking on hard things - sure, you will learn a lot through your own mistakes (hopefully), but have you ever considered the cost of that learning? (vs. learning through other ways than your own mistakes & failures) - it bears repeating that if you want outsized, outlier results, by definition your philosophy on this important topic of learning cannot be the average, safe philosophy you’ll hear everywhere, especially on LinkedIn. and it is also completely fine if you don’t want outlier results. it’s your life, so no point living it on anyone else’s terms