Hold it loosely enough to drop it

Here's the practice that turns teachability from an attitude into a habit. Form your view. Argue for it. But carry it the way you carry a hot pan — firmly, and ready to set it down the second someone shows you a better spot.

A foreman is sure the delay is the supplier's fault. He's built the whole morning's plan around it. Then an apprentice, half his age, points out the order was never actually placed. The teachable foreman doesn't dig in to save face. He changes the plan, because the plan was about getting the job done, not about him being right.

Marcus Aurelius kept a rule for exactly this — a man should be ready, he wrote, "to change thy opinion, if there is any one at hand who sets thee right and moves thee from any opinion" (Meditations 4.12, Long). Anyone at hand. Not just the expert, the senior, the one whose correction is easy to swallow. The kid on the order desk counts too.

This is the week's move worn down to a daily reflex: an opinion you can't be moved off of isn't a conviction. It's a wall, and you're the one stuck behind it.