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To Become Wise, Do Less

leveragethoughts.substack.com

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Re: To Become Wise, Do Less

#41

Post by the_omegist »

padheyam wrote: post #33

Wisdom is such a loaded term. I think the article conflates wisdom with productivity - "To become more productive, do less!" could have equally been an apt title. On wisdom, I am reminded of the Serenity Prayer- "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference." ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serenity_Prayer )

Came here to say the same thing.

Wisdom is linked to a life-long experienced person. No one can be said to be "wise" at 15.

And doing random things expecting to get "wise" is like moving frantically and randomly your limbs & expecting to learn kung fu.... Time has to make things decant.

Re: To Become Wise, Do Less

#42

Post by papito »

drannex wrote: post #10

To become wise, do everything, fuck up on most of it, and know what works and doesn't by direct experience. I am a minimalist (Essentialist) by choice, but a maximalist regarding knowledge and experience. Try and do everything you can, that way you know what does and doesn't work. Done. Anything else is overly reductive. You can't know how to do anything if you do or experience close to nothing. Leisure is good, I am…

That used to work for me when I was younger. Just power through it. Make all the mistakes yourself. Now I am older, and I prefer learning from the mistakes of others. I ain't got time for brute force.

Re: To Become Wise, Do Less

#43

Post by 5350-uiop-1130 »

It's like their are two extremes, be a hustler waking up at 3am to do barbell squats and work on your startup or be an idler wandering in the park waiting for some socratic revelations of wisdom.

Why can't we just be in the middle.

Use your common sense to choose where best to focus your limited time and energy, listen to yourself and not others.

Re: To Become Wise, Do Less

#44

Post by achenet »

sifar wrote: post #17
drannex wrote: post #10

To become wise, do everything, fuck up on most of it, and know what works and doesn't by direct experience. I am a minimalist (Essentialist) by choice, but a maximalist regarding knowledge and experience. Try and do everything you can, that way you know what does and doesn't work. Done. Anything else is overly reductive. You can't know how to do anything if you do or experience close to nothing. Leisure is good, I am…

>> Try and do everything you can Ars longa, vita brevis [1] While I agree that experience by doing is the way to learn, the thing is we have finite resources and time while the things which we want to do are infinite. Which means when you choose to do something you are choosing not to do something else - think of it as an opportunity cost. And merely doing without reflection is also not useful - and one can also refl…

I believe it was Bismarck who said

"Fools learn from their mistakes. I prefer to profit from the mistakes of others."

Re: To Become Wise, Do Less

#45

Post by laserlight »

drannex wrote: post #10

To become wise, do everything, fuck up on most of it, and know what works and doesn't by direct experience. I am a minimalist (Essentialist) by choice, but a maximalist regarding knowledge and experience. Try and do everything you can, that way you know what does and doesn't work. Done. Anything else is overly reductive. You can't know how to do anything if you do or experience close to nothing. Leisure is good, I am…

> To become wise, do everything, fuck up on most of it, and know what works and doesn't by direct experience.

One needs to be deliberate on understanding what works and what doesn't, otherwise they'll keep doing the same mistakes. Being deliberate requires slowing down, in my experience.

Re: To Become Wise, Do Less

#46

Post by helpfulmandrill »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #16
_8j50 wrote: post #12

To appear wise, say less.

"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt." https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/17/remain-silent/

If you care about not being a fool, rather than just not looking like one, remaining silent is not good advice.

Re: To Become Wise, Do Less

#47

Post by laserlight »

lanstin wrote: post #14
drannex wrote: post #10

To become wise, do everything, fuck up on most of it, and know what works and doesn't by direct experience. I am a minimalist (Essentialist) by choice, but a maximalist regarding knowledge and experience. Try and do everything you can, that way you know what does and doesn't work. Done. Anything else is overly reductive. You can't know how to do anything if you do or experience close to nothing. Leisure is good, I am…

If you are too busy, you will not think of the optimal solution to your intellectual problem. I don’t know about other people, but I often have the experience of banging away at some problem for a few hours, then going away and not thinking about it for a while then a simple resolution pops into my mind without much effort. Continuing to push hard when you aren’t getting any where on an intellectual puzzle isn’t alwa…

> I often have the experience of banging away at some problem for a few hours, then going away and not thinking about it for a while then a simple resolution pops into my mind without much effort.

This phenomenon is explained by focused vs. diffused modes of thinking, which I first heard about in Learning How to Learn MOOC [0]. There are many popular articles on the Web explaining the concept.

[0] https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn

Re: To Become Wise, Do Less

#48

Post by april_22 »

5350-uiop-1130 wrote: post #43

It's like their are two extremes, be a hustler waking up at 3am to do barbell squats and work on your startup or be an idler wandering in the park waiting for some socratic revelations of wisdom. Why can't we just be in the middle. Use your common sense to choose where best to focus your limited time and energy, listen to yourself and not others.

Exactly, especially since every person is totally different. Just find what suits you best.

Re: To Become Wise, Do Less

#49

Post by april_22 »

laserlight wrote: post #47
lanstin wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are too busy, you will not think of the optimal solution to your intellectual problem. I don’t know about other people, but I often have the experience of banging away at some problem for a few hours, then going away and not thinking about it for a while then a simple resolution pops into my mind without much effort. Continuing to push hard when you aren’t getting any where on an intellectual puzzle isn’t alwa…

> I often have the experience of banging away at some problem for a few hours, then going away and not thinking about it for a while then a simple resolution pops into my mind without much effort. This phenomenon is explained by focused vs. diffused modes of thinking, which I first heard about in Learning How to Learn MOOC [0]. There are many popular articles on the Web explaining the concept. [0] https://www.courser…

This looks like a real solid course, thanks for sharing!

Re: To Become Wise, Do Less

#50

Post by xcambar »

koonsolo wrote: post #37

To become wise, life has to beat the shit out of you. That means you will have some battle scars, and encountered yourself a few times. Thinking alone won't get you there. That will turn you into an "Intellectual Yet Idiot", as Nassim Taleb calls it.

I think it's hard to contradict this, yet it's a hardly accepted lemma.

I don't know why, maybe because we perceive knowledge as a pure thing, that can be shared, embraced and understood out of thin air, that we can be pure minds or something along those lines.

Yet, from personal experience, being taken down from your high horse and beaten down to earth by life itself (ie, this 0.0001% probability event that is 100% for you), well... It takes more than a fool to not take a learning out of it.

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