> What does one do with an intellectual life other than swimming through intellectual content?
I've found myself in a similar point in life (currently 29). When I was young, everyone encouraged me to learn, and I think I get intrinsic pleasure from it, so like you I've done an enormous amount of reading on a variety of topics.
# Ways being extremely curious can be bad that nobody tells you about
Not long ago, I started to feel discouraged because it didn't seem like the rules I was following in my life were actually making my life better. I think this was for a few reasons:
- For a long time I was reading articles on HN, Twitter, and elsewhere, so my attention was being extremely divided. When I became aware of this, I killed all my newsfeeds and just started reading books. Obviously I'm still here on HN, but I'm happy to say I read a fraction of what I used to.
- I prioritize learning something interesting over doing things that would make my life better, so I struggle with taking care of myself (e.g. cooking, household chores). I often wonder if I'm actually using learning as a distraction from anxiety.
- I started to realize most of the things I learn I don't really understand. This seems to be for a few reasons. 1) Reality has a surprising amount of detail, 2) a lot of authors honestly aren't that good, 3) I'm not always criticizing what I'm reading to see if it makes sense, sometimes just suspending disbelief with the hope that it'll all come together in time. But, if you don't actually understand things, you can't really do much with them. I've been aiming to instead of generically learn, learn with the aim of building tangible skills, because I think that would make me happier.
- I prioritize learning over reflecting on the higher-order reason for learning things in the first place. This is mostly because trying to figure out a high-level system to organize what I actually want to do with my life hasn't really seemed to get me anywhere, so I've resigned myself to looking at all the things I'm interested in learning, sticking with it for a few months, and then reevaluating. Not a system I'd recommend but it sort of works. I think I need to study philosophy; self-reflection for hours in coffee shops doesn't seem to actually lead to anything but disorganized, loosely associated vagaries.
- An extreme emphasis on reading can cause you to miss a huge part of your life, which is your conscious, subjective experience of things, who/what that spontaneous process that is "you" really is, and how to express it. For the longest time, I dismissed this as being useless to discuss or learn about because I felt if something couldn't be expressed in words, it was bullshit and it wasn't worth spending time on. The objective is nice and rational, but the subjective is still something you can gain knowledge of, and some people who are really in touch with art/fashion/film/interior design/music are shaping our emotional responses in ways that you just don't even notice if you limit yourself to books. A friend encouraged me to pick up an art to help develop this type of self-awareness better, and it's been a struggle, but one I'm grateful for.
# Explorers
Still, I think pleasure from learning is a valuable trait. One thing I've been reflecting on is Bartle's Taxonomy of Player Types [1], which would probably categorize us both as Explorers:
> Explorers, dubbed "Spades" (♠) for their tendency to dig around, are players who prefer discovering areas, and immerse themselves in the game world. They are often annoyed by time-restricted missions as that does not allow them to traverse at their own pace. They enjoy finding glitches or a hidden easter egg.
This model seems interesting to me for a few reasons:
- My friend, an Achiever type, and I, started playing an MMO game back in 2020 and we ended up completely dominating the in-game economy. I think this was because he was extremely pragmatic about moving us toward our goals, and I was able to really think hard about what we really needed to do in order to multiply our wealth.
- I've been reflecting on my career as a software engineer, and I think it wears me out because tech culture is so results oriented, which doesn't suit how I like to do things. I really don't care about making money or velocity, I just want to understand things and let my skills compound.
- I think this interest in deeply understanding how a system works and then being able to build new things with those principles was really valuable in being able to build/see the future in the game. I think it would work well in the real world as well. I've been looking for a word for this idea at a broader level, and I think it's essentially "critical thinking", something I don't think I ever properly learned in college. If I could do this in more parts of my life, I think I could do amazing things. I've been thinking of learning to write as a way to get better at this. But I agree, I don't really want to start a blog- I hate the attention economy and all it entails. I think all great writing is essentially criticism, but so is all great art and all great products, so I'd rather push in that direction after developing the ability to critically write/think.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartle_taxonomy_of_player_type...
I wrote this quickly, so apologize if it feels half-baked, but hope it stirs some thoughts. Am hoping others will have more to say on some of these points because honestly it's been an existential struggle for me trying to understand what to do with life. SWE hasn't really felt like my true calling lately.