How to build a career you actually love | Bill Gurley

**Modupe Akinola** (0:00)
Can you think of the last time you learned something completely new? I used that muscle so often when I was in school, or when I was just young and trying to figure out how to make it in the real world. But as I got older, routines fell into place, habits settled, and that muscle got a bit complacent. Then, at age 43, I decided to learn how to scuba dive. Talk about an immersive learning experience. There were so many technical steps I needed to be aware of. I figured out how it felt to be buoyant, how my body reacted to being in the water. And then there was this whole new world under the surface that I was beginning to study. Different varieties of fish, coral, and even sharks. I remember feeling obsessed with all the new knowledge I was acquiring. And even though it was worlds apart from the work I do, I actually found ways to relate it to my research on physiological responses to stress.
Scuba diving helped me to be more aware of the mind-body connection and how to self-regulate and stay calm when literally under pressure. And making that connection made me fall in love with my work in new ways I never expected.
Lifelong learning is a big part of people's job satisfaction.
But the more practice we get in our profession, the more distant this kind of learning can feel. So how do we fix that?
I'm Modupe Akinola. This is TED Business, a podcast from TED. Our speaker today is venture capitalist and author Bill Gurley. Bill has spent the last six years studying what drives career excellence. And his research has shown that the thing most high achievers have in common is an obsession with learning. His talk challenges us to reconnect with the pursuit of knowledge, especially in a time when it's easier than ever to let machines do the learning for us. Then after the talk, I'll share some insights on how to re-spark curiosity and fascination in your own life. But first, a quick break.

**Bill Gurley** (2:21)
I'm going to start with a story, a good story, a true story. In 1983, my friend Danny was 25 years old. A few years earlier, he had graduated from Trinity College with a polysci degree, bounced around for a while, but fell into a really cool job in sales. He sold those doohickeys they attached to clothes in the department store, so you can't steal them. He's good at it. He's making a lot of money. But as a polysci student, he'd always planned to take the next step, law school. So the night before the LSAT, he's out for dinner with his Uncle Richard, a place called Elio's on the Upper East Side. And Uncle Richard can tell something's not right. Danny, what's eating you? Ah, I have to take the LSAT tomorrow, and I don't really want to. Uncle Richard probed. So why are you?
I'll get back to Danny and Uncle Richard in a minute, but let me tell you why I'm here. I spent the past six years studying what drives career excellence. A co-writer, a researcher and I combed through over 100 biographies. We talked to some of the leading academicians in the field, looked at their research, and we even did our own survey with Wharton. We turned that into a book. What did we find? There were many common traits, but one thing stood out above everything else. Continuous and obsessive learning. They were all lifetime students. They knew the history of their field. They understand the nuance of their field, the thing that separates great from good. They know the edge of their field. That's where innovation lies. And they studied throughout their entire career, beginning, middle and end. I'd like to think they thought about their craft as an artisan, with an artisan mindset. And I've come to believe these artisans exist in every field. Here's a fun example. In 2015, at the Annual Chess Competition in Iceland, they did something fun. They held a history trivia contest. Guess who won? Magnus Carlsen, the world champion. See, he's not just great at chess, he knew the history. But if you study Magnus Carlsen, you know this to be true. It's very low likelihood that he got to a place in his career where he says, oh boy, to be even better at chess, I need to study the history. I'm going to go do it. It was a different mechanism. And this is my key point, the key takeaway right here at the beginning. Obsessive and continuous learning is not an input, it's an output. It's not the cause, it's the effect. What's the cause? What drives someone to learn for a lifetime? In 2024, Jerry Seinfeld, the comedian, gave the commencement speech at Duke University. And after making fun, which he's good at making fun of the phrase, follow your passion, he came up with a different word, a better word, a more precise word. He said, you should follow your fascination. I really love this distinction. You see, passion doesn't invoke work. You could be passionate about the Cincinnati Reds and sit in a chair for three and a half hours drinking beer.