Chapter 157 - My Early Life: 1874-1904
What I learned from Winston Churchill
Today’s Chapter is based on the book “My Early Life: 1874-1904” by Winston Churchill.
Winston Churchill was a British statesman, orator, and writer who served twice as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, most famously leading the country to victory in the Second World War (1940–1945, 1951–1955). Born in 1874 and dying in 1965, he became renowned for his wartime speeches, his role in shaping Allied strategy against Nazi Germany, and later received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953 for his historical and biographical writings.
Here’s what I learned:
Self-Education
“I never let my schooling interfere with my education.“
— Mark Twain
Winston Churchill’s formal academic record was, by his own admission, horrible. He was often at the bottom of his class and seemed destined for mediocrity. As a matter of fact, he detested the fact that he was forced to learn dead languages such as Latin and Greek. He hated learning the classics because it wasn’t interesting to him. Churchill explains, “Where my reason, imagination or interest were not engaged, I would not or I could not learn. In all the twelve years I was at school no one ever succeeded in making me write a Latin verse or learn any Greek except the alphabet. I do not at all excuse myself for this foolish neglect of opportunities procured at so much expense by my parents and brought so forcibly to my attention by my Preceptors. Perhaps if I had been introduced to the ancients through their history and customs, instead of through their grammar and syntax, I might have had a better record.”
However, this very failure led him to focus on studying English, and luckily for Churchill, he was great at it. This early focus on English gave him a masterful command of the English language that was primordial for his success as a writer and as a politician. As he mentions, “However, by being so long in the lowest form I gained an immense advantage over the cleverer boys. They all went on to learn Latin and Greek and splendid things like that. But I was taught English. We were considered such dances that we could learn only English.”
“Thus I got into my bones the essential structure of the ordinary British sentence–which is a noble thing. And when in after years my schoolfellows who had won prizes and distinction for writing such beautiful Latin poetry and pithy Greek epigrams had to come down again to common English, to earn their living or make their way, I did not feel myself at any disadvantage.”
— Winston Churchill
Furthermore, Churchill believes that his education truly began when he developed a personal hunger for knowledge while he was stationed in India as a soldier. There, free from formal education, he embarked on a disciplined program of reading that was entirely self-directed by his interest. In fact, while Churchill’s passion for reading started early when he was nine and a half years old when he was reading books beyond his years, he truly went through a self-made education at twenty-two. He requested crates of books from his mother and embarked on a rigorous schedule of reading that included Plato, Aristotle, Schopenhauer, Malthus, Macaulay, Gibbon and Darwin.
Churchill writes, “IT was not until this winter of 1896, when I had almost completed my twenty-second year, that the desire for learning came upon me. I began to feel myself wanting in even the vaguest knowledge about many large spheres of thought. I had picked up a wide vocabulary and had a liking for words and for the feel of words fitting and falling into their places like pennies in the slot. I caught myself using a good many words the meaning of which I could not define precisely. I admired these words, but was afraid to use them for fear of being absurd.”
“From November to May I read for four or five hours every day history and philosophy. Plato’s Republic–it appeared he was for all practical purposes the same as Socrates; the Politics of Aristotle, edited by Mr Welldon himself; Schopenhauer on Pessimism; Malthus on Population; Darwin’s Origin of Species: all interspersed with other books of lesser standing. It was a curious education. First because I approached it with an empty, hungry mind, and with fairly strong jaws; and what I got I bit; secondly because I had no one to tell me: ‘This is discredited’. ‘You should read the answer to that by so and so; the two together will give you the gist of the argument’. ‘There is a much better book on that subject’, and so forth.”
— Winston Churchill
Finally, one key element that helped with his learning that Churchill picked up during this time was the “Socratic method”. He explains that it is “a way of giving your friend his head in an argument and progging him into a pit by cunning questions. Who was Socrates, anyhow? A very argumentative Greek who had a nagging wife and was finally compelled to commit suicide because he was a nuisance! Still, he was beyond doubt a considerable person. He counted for a lot in the minds of learned people. I wanted ‘the Socrates story’. ”
As we have previously learned, the socratic approach is great way to dissect problems into first principles. A great example of a first principles thinker is Elon Musk. When he faced against a complex problem, he always tried to reframe it by using first-principles thinking. His work at Space X is a great example of this. Considering that rockets are absurdly expensive, Musk knew that he had to find a way to build cheaper rockets to send people to Mars.
As such, he implemented an “idiot index”, which calculated how much more costly a finished product was compared to the cost of its basic materials. By consequence, he realized that a rocket, which has a high idiot index, was around two percent of the typical material price. This was often due to inefficient manufacturing. As Musk would put it, “If the ratio is high, you’re an idiot.”
By consequence, Musk knew that the solution for cheaper rockets was for Musk to build them himself. If he could device a more efficient rocket manufacturing technique, he would be able to make rockets at a fraction of the cost.
“I think people’s thinking process is too bound by convention or analogy to prior experiences. It’s rare that people try to think of something on a first principles basis. They’ll say, “We’ll do that because it’s always been done that way.” Or they’ll not do it because “Well, nobody’s ever done that, so it must not be good. But that’s just a ridiculous way to think. You have to build up the reasoning from the ground up—“from the first principles” is the phrase that’s used in physics. You look at the fundamentals and construct your reasoning from that, and then you see if you have a conclusion that works or doesn’t work, and it may or may not be different from what people have done in the past.”
— Elon Musk
Furthermore, Musk loved to question every requirements, especially when it came from regulators. In fact, a big reason why rocket components were expensive is due to the fact that they are subject to hundreds of specifications and requirements mandated by the military and NASA. Elon Musk would often asks his engineers, both at Tesla and at SpaceX, to always question these “requirements” through first-principle thinking. By doing so, one realises that more often than not, these requirements are not necessary.
As Musk would say, “Step one should be to question the requirements, make them less wrong and dumb, because all requirements are somewhat wrong and dumb. And then delete, delete, delete.”
By questioning requirements and seeing them as mere recommendations, Musk was not only able to save money, but he was also able to make his manufacturing of rockets and cars much more efficient.
“The only rules are the ones dictated by the laws of physics. Everything else is a recommendation.”
— Elon Musk
Elon Musk was so serious about this concept of questioning all requirements that he implemented a five-point checklist that was dubbed “the algorithm”. Here’s a summary of it:
“1. Question every requirement. Each should come with the name of the person who made it. You should never accept that a requirement came from a department, such as from “the legal department” or “the safety department.” You need to know the name of the real person who made that requirement. Then you should question it, no matter how smart that person is. Requirements from smart people are the most dangerous, because people are less likely to question them. Always do so, even if the requirement came from me. Then make the requirements less dumb.
2. Delete any part or process you can. You may have to add them back later. In fact, if you do not end up adding back at least 10% of them, then you didn’t delete enough.
3. Simplify and optimize. This should come after step two. A common mistake is to simplify and optimize a part or a process that should not exist.
4. Accelerate cycle time. Every process can be speeded up. But only do this after you have followed the first three steps. In the Tesla factory, I mistakenly spent a lot of time accelerating processes that I later realized should have been deleted.
5. Automate. That comes last. The big mistake in Nevada and at Fremont was that I began by trying to automate every step. We should have waited until all the requirements had been questioned, parts and processes deleted, and the bugs were shaken out.”
Master of English
“He [Winston Churchill] mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.“
— Edward R. Murrow
After studying great English writers like Thomas Macaulay and Edward Gibbon, Churchill became a great writer in his own right and he even won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953. As such, it is fair to say that we have much to learn from Churchill both in writing and in communicating in the English language.
In short, Churchill believed in the importance of structure in writing. As a matter of fact, he compared writing to many different kind of things such as architecture where structure is important. He explains, “Writing a book is not unlike building a house or planning a battle or painting a picture. The technique is different, the materials are different, but the principle is the same. The foundations have to be laid, the data assembled, and the premises must bear the weight of their conclusions. Ornaments or refinements may then be added. The whole when finished is only the successful presentation of a theme.“
As such, Churchill believed that to master writing in English, you need to know how to use paragraphs and sentences to your advantage. He mentions, “I began to see that writing, especially narrative, was not only an affair of sentences, but of paragraphs. Indeed I thought the paragraph no less important than the sentence. Macaulay is a master of paragraphing. Just as the sentence contains one idea in all its fullness, so the paragraph should embrace a distinct episode; and as sentences should follow one another in harmonious sequence, so the paragraphs must fit on to one another like the automatic couplings of railway carriages.”
Similarly, he understood that separating things into chapters was also an art. He explains that “Each chapter must be self-contained. All the chapters should be of equal value and more or less of equal length. Some chapters define themselves naturally and obviously; but much more difficulty arises when a number of heterogeneous incidents none of which can be omitted have to be woven together into what looks like an integral theme.”
“Finally the work must be surveyed as a whole and due proportion and strict order established from beginning to end. I already knew that chronology is the key to easy narrative. I already realised that ‘good sense is the foundation of good writing’. I warned myself against the fault of beginning my story as some poor people do ‘Four thousand years before the Deluge’, and I repeated earnestly one of my best French quotations, ‘L’art d’être ennuyeux c’est de tout dire.’ I think I will repeat it again now.”
— Winston Churchill
This is a great opportunity to review what we have learned from Stephen King, who was kind enough to share with us a few concepts to help us improve as writers in his memoir. And, the most important tenet is to keep things simple. As a matter of fact, he provides us a list of things we must avoid in order to write better:
Avoid passive verbs: King believes that “With an active verb, the subject of the sentence is doing something. With a passive verb, something is being done to the subject of the sentence. The subject is just letting it happen. You should avoid the passive tense.”
Avoid the overuse of adverbs: King explains that “The adverb is not your friend. Adverbs, he said sternly. With adverbs, the writer usually tells us he or she is afraid he/ she isn’t expressing himself/ herself clearly, that he or she is not getting the point or the picture across.” Or as Mark Twain once said, “Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very’; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.”
Avoid the use of other verbs outside of “say” in a dialogue attribution: King mentions that “The best form of dialogue attribution is said, as in he said, she said, Bill said, Monica said.”
Furthermore, King believes that the root of most bad writing comes from fear. As a matter of fact, a bad writer usually thinks he or she needs to use adverbs or complex words because they are fearful that he or she isn’t expressing himself or herself clearly, that he or she is not getting the point or the picture across. However, King believes that these actions tend to lead to opposite effects.
King mentions that “Good writing is often about letting go of fear and affectation. (…) Good writing is also about making good choices when it comes to picking the tools you plan to work with.” According to King, if you don’t have a good toolbox, an easy way to write better is to strictly use noun-verb sentences; once again, a proof of the power of keeping things simple.
“Take any noun, put it with any verb, and you have a sentence. It never fails. Rocks explode. Jane transmits. Mountains float. These are all perfect sentences. Many such thoughts make little rational sense, but even the stranger ones (Plums deify!) have a kind of poetic weight that’s nice. The simplicity of noun-verb construction is useful—at the very least it can provide a safety net for your writing.”
— Stephen King
Finally, King mentions the necessity to rewrite in order to keep your writing as simple as possible. King explains that the best lesson he received in terms of writing came from his English literature teacher, John Gould, who once told him, “When you write a story, you’re telling yourself the story. When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story.”
As a matter of fact, King’s approach to writing involves a structured process that begins with the first draft. Once that is done, he recommends a period of rest before beginning the rewriting process. As he explains, “If you’ve never done it before, you’ll find reading your book over after a six- week layoff to be a strange, often exhilarating experience. It’s yours, you’ll recognize it as yours, even be able to remember what tune was on the stereo when you wrote certain lines, and yet it will also be like reading the work of someone else, a soul-twin, perhaps. This is the way it should be, the reason you waited. It’s always easier to kill someone else’s darlings than it is to kill your own.”
King mentions that in his rewriting process, or the second draft, he will try to remove all unnecessary words in order to speed up the story. His formula is simple: “2nd Draft = 1st Draft minus 10%.” A formula to works every time.
Destiny
“There is no immortality but the memory that is left in the minds of men.”
— Napoleon
For Napoleon Bonaparte, nothing was more humiliating than for one to not achieve his destiny. For him, it was all a bout making a name for himself to be remembered throughout history. In fact, he once said that to have lived without glory, without leaving a trace of one’s existence is to not have lived at all. Napoleon once said, “Everything on earth is soon forgotten, except the opinion we leave imprinted on history.”
Napoleon believed that destiny can be fulfilled by the exploitation of every opportunities or accidents that are presented in front of you. This can only be done with exact calculation of all the chances, and by precise determination of the decisive moment for action. A clever man is one who understands this principle.
“All great events hang by a single thread. The clever man takes advantage of everything, neglects nothing that may give him some added opportunity; the less clever man, by neglecting one thing, sometimes misses everything.”
— Napoleon
In a similar way, Winston Churchill believed he was destined for glory. As a descendant of John Churchill, 1st Lord of Marlborough and of Lord Randolph Churchill, little Winston believed he was to become a successful politician. However, he understood that to reach this goal, he had to obtain fame and glory and, in the Victorian era, this was done by military success.
Unfortunately for Churchill, wars were scarce during his times. He writes, “In the closing decade of the Victorian era the Empire had enjoyed so long a spell of almost unbroken peace, that medals and all they represented in experience and adventure were becoming extremely scarce in the British Army.”
“It did seem such a pity that it all had to be make-believe, and that the age of wars between civilised nations had come to an end for ever. If it had only been 100 years earlier what splendid times we should have had! Fancy being nineteen in 1793 with more than twenty years of war against Napoleon in front of one! However, all that was finished.”
— Winston Churchill
As such, it is not surprising that Churchill jumped at the first opportunity for him to participate in combat. He even went as far to use his personal connection to be transferred to zones of combat. He mentions that he “first met Sir Bindon Blood. This general was one of the most trusted and experienced commanders on the Indian frontier. He was my host’s lifelong friend. He had come home fresh from his successful storming of the Malakand Pass in the autumn of 1895. If future trouble broke out on the Indian frontier, he was sure to have a high command. He thus held the key to future delights. I made good friends with him. One Sunday morning on the sunny lawns of Deepdene I extracted from the General a promise that if ever he commanded another expedition on the Indian frontier, he would let me come with him.”
Luckily for Churchill, he was able to see combat first in Cuba and later on during the Second Boer War, where he became famous for being a captive of the Boers and making a great escape. As a matter of fact, Churchill was captured by the enemy after an armoured train ambush. He faced indefinite imprisonment due to his background as a Lord. For a man of his ambition, however, this was a fate worse than death. His escape from the Boer prison in Pretoria is the stuff of legend and he quickly became a war hero. The escape made him a global celebrity and paved his way into Parliament. For Churchill, this was all planned as his destiny, but it is important to note that he succeeded by creating these opportunities. Similarly, he offers advices to young people, urging them to reject passivity. He views the twenties as the golden years of action, where one has the energy to fail, to recover, and to make a mark. His philosophy is one of aggressive optimism, a refusal to take “no” for an answer, and a determination to impose one’s will upon the world.
“When I look back upon them I cannot but return my sincere thanks to the high gods for the gift of existence. All the days were good and each day better than the other. Ups and downs, risks and journeys, but always the sense of motion, and the illusion of hope. Come on now all you young men, all over the world. You are needed more than ever now to fill the gap of a generation shorn by the War. You have not an hour to lose. You must take your places in life’s fighting line. Twenty to twenty-five! These are the years! Don’t be content with things as they are. ‘The earth is yours and the fulness thereof.’ Enter upon your inheritance, accept your responsibilities. Raise the glorious flags again, advance them upon the new enemies, who constantly gather upon the front of the human army, and have only to be assaulted to be overthrown. Don’t take No for an answer. Never submit to failure. Do not be fobbed off with mere personal success or acceptance. You will make all kinds of mistakes; but as long as you are generous and true, and also fierce, you cannot hurt the world or even seriously distress her. She was made to be wooed and won by youth. She has lived and thrived only by repeated subjugations.”
— Winston Churchill
Beyond the Book
Read "What is First Principles Thinking?" by Farnam Street
Read "Elon Musk: A Framework for Thinking" by Farnam Street
Listen to "#319 The Making of Winston Churchill Part 1" by Founders Podcast
Listen to "#320 The Making of Winston Churchill Part 2" by Founders Podcast
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