Some thoughts on thinking.
First in a post from 2018:
“The way you grow in life is by integrating your experience and updating your actions. You do that through reflection.
If you work but never take any time to think through what you’re doing, what you’re struggling with, what you’re enjoying, and what you want to do differently, your responses will stay the same. You’ll get older, and more experienced, but you’ll still respond to situations the same way as when you started.
If you take time to reflect regularly, you learn to see patterns, you learn to think instead of reacting, and you slowly but surely increase your abilities. You can predict situations better because you are in tune with your intuition, which makes you more efficient. You are more empathetic because you reflect on the reasons behind the actions of others.
Even something as small as ten minutes a day of free journalling will dramatically change the way you interact with your work over the course of six months.”
And then from an older post in 2016 about waves of technological and social change:
“Today the waves are approaching rapidly and are of epic size.
Young people with vision but without the confidence to surf are paralyzed by fears about automation. They know that technology will disrupt many of the careers the traditional education system is presenting to them. And so many long for the safety and security they imagine they once had by replacing the state as a parent with universal basic income.
Those of us further into our careers have the skills and confidence to surf the coming waves of technology. To create a ton of value and accumulate wealth, but many of us are too busy with day-to-day responsibilities to think deeply about the changes coming, or how we could best prepare. Concentrated thought is so valuable
In an environment of swelling technological waves, systematic thought is not just valuable, it is crucial. We need time to pull our heads up from to-do lists and day-to-day responsibilities to perceive how the world is changing. Systematic thinking allows you to incorporate what you are seeing in your industry to form a vision of what is likely to happen. You are able to spot the waves, point your surfboard in the right direction and ride them.”
The rewards and costs of being ignorant of the ongoing changes in the world are growing. Those who put time into understanding what’s happening and developing insight into what might come don’t only put themselves in a position to earn more but also to survive.
As crisis after crisis arises and the systems and institutions around us become increasingly tyrannical, it is independence earned through skill, insight, and resources that allow us to live in line with our principles, not so much ideology or beliefs.
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