Book 160 - A Year of Magical Learning

Reflection Title: I Don’t Know Anything!

Book – Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know by Adam Grant

Book Description:

Intelligence is usually seen as the ability to think and learn, but in a rapidly changing world, there's another set of cognitive skills that might matter more: the ability to rethink and unlearn. In our daily lives, too many of us favor the comfort of conviction over the discomfort of doubt. We listen to opinions that make us feel good, instead of ideas that make us think hard. We see disagreement as a threat to our egos, rather than an opportunity to learn. We surround ourselves with people who agree with our conclusions, when we should be gravitating toward those who challenge our thought process. The result is that our beliefs get brittle long before our bones. We think too much like preachers defending our sacred beliefs, prosecutors proving the other side wrong, and politicians campaigning for approval - and too little like scientists searching for truth. Intelligence is no cure, and it can even be a curse: being good at thinking can make us worse at rethinking. The brighter we are, the blinder to our own limitations we can become.

Reflection:

Reminder to myself and anyone following along with this journey –

I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING…and neither do you!

I’ve said this dozens of times before on this journey, but I’ll say it again as another reminder to myself and everyone following along that I truly believe this to my core. When I say “I Don’t Know Anything”, I truly mean it. To show how serious I am about living this idea, I decided to add Humility to my core values to ensure I can never veer from this philosophy in the future.

For me, saying I don’t know anything is the ultimate reminder to myself that this universe is filled with an infinite number of ideas, approaches, thoughts, concepts, etc. The universe is so big that it is unfathomable to even comprehend if I tried. I’ve probably consumed .00000000000000000000000000000001% of all the knowledge that has ever existed in this world, and who is to say that any of that minuscule amount was even “fact”.

People might look at this journey and say, “Chris, come on, you’ve read 365 books in the past few years alone. You must know something at this point?” They would be wrong. I often actually feel a lot dumber these days than when I first began this journey. Once you allow yourself to start thinking, be curious, ask questions, and challenge your current assumptions, the world can become so confusing. There is power and conviction in ignorance, there are only more questions once you start asking questions.

When you take on this mentality, you start to realize the fragility of our ideas and mental constructs. Ideas and knowledge can change rapidly, as we learned in Why Fish Don’t Exist for example. 100 years ago, David Starr Jordan spent a lifetime obsessed entire with finding and categorizing fish which know have been determined by scientists to not even be a thing anymore. Poof…all of your life’s work is gone in an instant as we learn more.

The past 2 paragraphs would make it seem like I’m making a case against unlearning and rethinking as it sounds terrifying and like a lot of work with no obvious reward to live your life in this way? If ignorance can be bliss, why would I go against happiness? If you are thinking that you would be missing the point of this entire journey if that were the case. This journey isn’t about knowing anything, being right, or seeking truth. This journey is about exploring myself, my values, and living for 2 for my daughter. It is about living what you say you care about most in this world. For me, 2 of those things are learning and remaining humble to know that I don’t know anything. That is why I’m doing this, will continue to live this life, and in the end I’ve never been happier.

If I wasn’t doing it this way, I shutter to think what my goals of unlearning and rethinking would have even been on this journey? I’m sure I’d either have become, like Adam Grant calls, a preacher, a prosecutor, or a politician as I attempted to use my knowledge to explain to everyone that they don’t know anything. I’d be figuring out ways to use the little new knowledge I’ve gained to try and manipulate others to do what I selfishly desired. If that is your goal for acquiring new knowledge…please stop now!

My advice for anyone that is interested in unlearning and rethinking as a way of life, make sure you are anchoring this change to concepts you value and want to explore and not things or goals you hope to acquire. If you do, it can open up a whole new world for you to explore of excitement and adventure that never gets old.

Question: What new adventures could you find yourself on using the power of unlearning and rethinking?

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Links:

What is The Year of Magical Learning? An Introduction

YOML Podcast Discussion - Coming Soon

YOML Bookstore - Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know by Adam Grant