Chris J Wilson

Back when I was a teacher, we had to fill in a register and record of work. This helped other teachers know what we had done in the last class and so they could prepare material for the following class. Some teachers saw this as unnecessary as they never shared classes, and so when they were off sick they would be contacted several times to find out what on earth they had been up to for the last few months. Most teachers included a few rough notes and some references to materials that could be helpful up to a point. I made it my aim to help my future self…who is an idiot.

I have a bad natural memory; I forget almost everything. It’s one of the reasons I love pen, paper, and task management apps — they have helped me avoid many problems. However, putting a note down doesn’t always help my future self.

A note can be useful, or it can be confusing.

When writing a note we are prone to the “curse of knowledge” where we assume that our future self will have the same information at hand that we do. That is rarely true. Instead, we will have a whole different set of memories and data clouding our perspective.

Assuming that our future self is a dumb idiot who won’t remember a thing is a great way to write a note that will be useful in the future.

And it was also a great way to write notes in records of work that helped teachers who had to cover classes.

³Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. ⁴Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. ⁵Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the Earth. ⁶Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. ⁷Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. ⁸Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. ⁹Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. ¹⁰Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. ¹¹Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. ¹²Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

I’ve been thinking about this topic a lot and don’t have clear ideas. I both think that there is good and bad within this movement (and that it’s both new and old). One recent idea I had is that we focus on those who have been cancelled. We don’t notice the times when people aren’t “cancelled” because there was no outcome. That’s why don’t mention however many events a controversial speaker went to, only the ones that were cancelleed. On the other side, we don’t know about all the terrible acts that people carry out and face no reprecussions for.

In Greek mythology, a genius wasn’t a person, it was a spirit who came and inspired the creator. But over time, we started to call people of intelligence and creativity geniuses. Elizabeth Gilbert would like us to return to this Greek idea and take the pressure off creative people to perform.

I think we could take a different route.

We could choose to inspire others. We could choose to take on the role of those spirits and offer encouragement and prompts.

We don’t need to do anything spectacular, but just offer a little spark to help.

We can all be geneses.

It never cease to amaze me how often I’m stuck, unable to start an article, section, or sentence and I tell myself

“Just write what the point is that you want to make, just clarify the thought.”

and sometimes I write exactly what should go there. Most of the time, however, it sucks.

But now I know what to write.

The Tim Ferriss Show Transcripts: Malcolm Gladwell (#168)

My dad is a great question asker. And my father has this, and I’ve spoken about it many times, of his many gifts, one in particular, as a kid, always had the biggest impact on me, which is my father has zero intellectual insecurities. So this is the only thing he has in common with Obama. He and Obama are the same way. It has never crossed his mind to be concerned that the world thinks he’s an idiot. He’s not in that game. So if he doesn’t understand something, he just asks you. He doesn’t care if he sounds foolish. He will ask the most obvious question. And it was without any sort of concern about it.

And maybe it’s because my dad is a mathematician. So he has this thing that he knows he’s really good at. And so he’s home free. If you have a PhD in math, you’re home free. … Yeah. And it’s like if you look like an idiot because you don’t know anything about basketball, who cares? So he asks lots and lots and lots of dumb, in the best sense of that word, dumb questions. He’ll say to someone I don’t understand. Explain that to me. And he’ll just keep asking questions until he gets it right. And I grew up listening to him do this in every conceivable setting. My father, here is this guy with his PhD in math. He made friends with all of these farmers who were our neighbors who were all drop outs.

I can’t remember where I heard about this quote (not from Tim’s podcast) but I’ve been trying to apply it. Ask questions “Do you mean… Sorry I don’t understand.” I’ll report back on the results.