Ducks in a Row: Slow Makes You Smarter
by Miki Saxon
I doubt I’ll ever understand why, but being busy supposedly makes a person more valuable.
I find this amusing, since it is slow time that makes you smarter and, perhaps, even wiser; both extremely valuable traits.
The pressure of social media to react impedes your ability/willingness to stop and think.
In Plato’s Apology of Socrates, Plato writes that Socrates left the encounter thinking of the politician, “Well, although I do not suppose that either of us knows anything really beautiful and good, I am better off than he is—for he knows nothing and thinks that he knows. I neither know nor think that I know. In this latter particular, then, I seem to have slightly the advantage of him.“ Ever since, Socratic ignorance has been the hallmark of wisdom in Western thinking. (…)
That’s why slow thinking is not just wise—it’s also a revolutionary act right now. In reactionary times, slowness, responsiveness rather than reactiveness, is a radical rejection of the internet’s perpetual call to action: Always be choosing sides. Deliberate undecidedness, refusing to choose and know it all, is a kind of intellectual rebellion against the relentless pressure to get with the socially appropriate program—whatever it happens to be within your ideological and informational bubbles.
A post at Farnam Street introduces the idea of first-order positive, second-order negative (shoutout to Wally Bock for this article). It parallels the exponentially increasing need for instant gratification.
We have trouble delaying gratification, so we do a lot of things that are first-order positive, second-order negative. We buy bigger houses than we need, only to find that rising interest rates make the mortgage payment untenable. We buy the sexy car only to discover later that it depreciates faster than the commuter car. (…)
Making time to think is a great example of something that’s first-order negative with some future payoff that’s not easily visible. However, when you think through problems, you’ll not only come to better decisions on the whole but you’ll also avoid a lot of problems.
Of course, those who are too busy to think will definitely be too busy to read.
Which means they are busier than
- Warren Buffett (80% of his time was/is spent reading and thinking)
- Charlie Munger (Buffet’s partner who said, “In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn’t read all the time — none. Zero.” )
- Bill Gates (reads a book a week and has taken a yearly two-week reading vacation throughout his career)
And then there is Barak Obama. I seriously doubt there is anyone in the business world who is busier, or under more stress, than Obama was during his eight years in office, yet he read for an hour every day (the 5-hour rule).
Ben Franklin said, “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”
Paul Tudor Jones, the self-made billionaire entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist, who should know says, “Intellectual capital will always trump financial capital.”
Futurist Alvin Toffler says, in no uncertain terms, “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”
And did you ever notice that learn is earn with an ‘l’?
Image credit: Katy Warner
