On learning

Worry not about the breadth of your ignorance. Only pay attention to how much you can progress right now.

Tomorrow doesn’t matter. Your eyes shouldn’t be on the prize, but on the progress. When you enjoy the act of investing and all of the work that goes into it, you follow the footsteps of Warren Buffett. When you find pleasure in the act of practice and becoming better, you follow the footsteps of Kobe Bryant. These two enjoy the process itself.

Focusing on outcomes will not give you enough motivation to continue going, and you’ll never reap the rewards because of it. If you do reach your intended outcome, you won’t exceed that expectation, which would be an equally disappointing waste of your time. As you learn, you have to enjoy the learning itself, not some abstract idea of intelligence that you strive for. What is an IQ? What does it mean and what are its implications? Nothing, to you. Perhaps as a society, it’s a measure that we should pay attention to, but to you, it couldn’t matter less. Your job is to wake up and be the proper and industrious human that you are called to be. Any prize that distracts you from that work should be discarded rapidly.