When self-made billionaire investor Ray Dalio wanted to understand changing world events, he didn’t just look at the latest news. He became an amateur historian and spent months looking back at cycles going back hundreds of years — something almost no one else does.

When Bill Gates wanted to grow Microsoft in the early 1990s, he didn’t just study the latest industry news and business books. He studied science. A 1994 interview is telling:

Interviewer: Do you dislike being called a businessman?

Bill Gates: Yeah. Of my mental cycles, I devote maybe 10% to business thinking. Business isn’t that complicated. I wouldn’t want to put it on my business card.

Interviewer: What, then?

Bill Gates: Scientist.

Similarly, when Elon Musk thinks about what CEOs need to know, he doesn’t put business skills near the top of his list. Instead he says:

The path to the CEO’s office should not be through the CFO’s office, and it should not be through the marketing department. It needs to be through engineering and design.*—*Elon Musk

What’s going on here?

How is it possible that three of the top investors and innovators in human history say that business skills aren’t the key to business success? It’s like saying the key to parenting isn’t parenting skills? Or that the key to gardening is not gardening skills?

It makes you wonder:

What do they see differently about selecting skills to learn than others? Or are these just quirky people who enjoy exploring their curiosities?