2-3-4: How to beat Google in answering questions 

‘Seeking to spark the most potential within you per word of any online newsletter’

1 thought 

What if you could know many things, combine many different things you knew, and produce something extraordinary? Like the Mona Lisa? Or an explanation for the stars? Or a book like ‘The Four Hour Work Week’? 

 

Leonardo Da Vinci. Galileo. Tim Ferriss. What do they have in common? 

 

They know many things. Deeply. 

 

What’s more important, is that they know how to integrate these different fields of knowledge. They are polymaths. 

 

Yesterday, I spoke to Marc Goh, the founder of Design Prodigy. He started the Ungoogleable Challenge, 

Where we gather polymathic undergraduates from non-marketing academic backgrounds to take on tough marketing challenges that keep the professionals awake at night.

 

Sound crazy? It’s like asking someone trained in computer programming to think about solutions to vexing issues in social work like, 

How do we bring in more resources into the social service sector?

But why? Why even bother about polymathy and knowing many things?

 

Because you solve more complex problems that way. Think of different fields of knowledge as different angles of looking at the same problem.

 

As you use a certain principle from a particular field of knowledge, and another principle from another field, you see new dimensions of the problem. 

Okay, you may not be convinced. 

 

One problem I grapple with involved a personal problem many are familiar with. 

Weight gain. 

Why do I constantly eat even though I don’t want to? 

Usual fields of knowledge from biology or psychology did not work. Eat more fibre. Avoid food triggers. Blend smoothies (YUCK!)

 

But then I thought, what if I took a lesson I learnt from financial investing? To focus on execution, rather than on decisions? As Lee Freeman=Shor discovered in his study of 1866 investments, only 920 (49%) of investments made money. 

 

If most of their investments were wrong, how did they make money? 

What mattered in their eventual winnings was how they adjusted after they decided. Whether to cut, add or hold. 

 

It meant that I started running small experiments on myself to see what worked and what didn’t. Everytime something worked, I did more and more of it. 

 

But what about those that didn’t? How did I stop them? Like my bad physical and psychological habit to eat after 10PM, whenever I craved food? Again, another concept of investing is detachment. It’s where you detach yourself from what you’ve invested in, so that you can make better judgments, unaffected by your own psychological bias. Each time there’s a substantial change in what you expected from the investment, you go in with a fresh mind.

You ask, 

Knowing what I do now, would I still do the same? 

 

Therefore, with bad habits, it was the same. Knowing what I did of that habit, would I still choose to do the same? It was liberating to know that I did not have to. But I could because I wanted to. 

Bringing in knowledge from other fields helps you question problems in new ways. 

That’s where polymathy comes in. Marc points out that polymathy occurs on a scale. Not everyone may be da Vinci. But everyone can have traits that make them a polymath. 

What are those traits? 

There’s one. Curiosity. 

 

Learn to be curious. Let your mind wander. Ask ‘stupid’ questions. Put your phone aside. Find answers without Google. Find the answer from a book. Engage in discussions. 

Read outside your field. Put aside the self-help books for a while and read science. 

 

1 quote 

Read what you love, so that you love to read. 

Naval Ravikant, angel investor 

 

1 tip 

I admit. I hate reading science books. After years of studying science, I couldn’t bear another book about DNA. I flipped into reading popular psychology and self-help. But my brain has not been for the better of it. 

Can I tell you a secret about what I’ve been reading recently?

It’s…

“Why is sex fun?” 

by Jared Diamond

 

I wanted to read about something interesting that would engage me again. I made the excuse that this would give me ‘interdisciplinary knowledge’. 

 

You can stop laughing now. But it gave me a new way to understand why for example, we have children without being financially ready for them. 

 

You get the idea. Read about what you love, so that you love to read. Read outside your field, so that you craft better problem statements. 

Read.

 

P.S. You studied 16 years in school. And found none of it applicable to your years in work now. Have you ever wondered why? Maybe you felt like nothing would ever work. It’s because you haven’t focused on the single most important relationship at work. I’ve helped people like Gary achieve a 25% pay rise in 3 months. And to wake up raring to work. Want that? Let’s chat.

 

John