Tanzia is the Associate Director, at a well reputed MNC, we studied together at IBA-DU. She sent me a message one day late August, saying she had read some of my recent articles, and those were Pretty insightful and thanked me for writing it. She continued her question and said if I could recommend her a few places of finding similar insightful content, as she was trying to read more.
Of course, I was very happy to hear this praise from such a professional who handles such broad responsibilities, as the responsibility of a person is usually very good indicator of her growth. My initial thought though, was to just give her the name of the first book that came to mind. However, I am trying not go for the quick answer, and instead increase my ability to go deeper into the issues that face me.
I requested her to send me some examples of articles that seem insightful to her, to really understand what she means by INSIGHTFUL, before just assuming we were on the same page. To which she sent me this fairly interesting HBR article on company culture, among others, Took the whole day finishing my routine work, and at night I read her question and the article. The result is this introduction of sorts, tackling the core issue to not just FINDING insights but rather BECOMING insightful.
Step 1. Learning to differentiate between different types of insights.
Broadly speaking. Anything that is written or said anywhere can be divided in two types.
- Originating from the mouth
- Originating from the heart
Here heart and mouth are supposed to represent deep insight and quick logical connections (not the organs themselves). But the words make it easier to grasp what I mean by this.
When you see the materials out of mouth, you see that it is INTERESTING, but doesn't really have a hold onto you, meaning it is not something you are likely to remember a few months later, except for an anecdote or example there. It is just quick mishmash of ideas, linking up tangents, to sound a bit smart. Case in point, the last article Tanzia sent me. They have some supposed RECOMMENDATIONS that on first scrutiny, falls apart. How DO YOU recruit resilient people? How do you know from beforehand if someone can face shocks? Mental and emotional? Financial? Political? Each one affects us differently and you only know after a year of employing someone if they are tough enough. Even then, a weak person can show extreme bravery in a greater danger. History is full of these lessons. Today the picture is no different.
One potential real lesson, if it came from the HEART: MAKE SURE THAT YOUR EMPLOYEES FEEL SAFE TO ACT in the face of uncertainty. So that they can explore and become more effective than ever before. If they are busy saving their asses in the face of job cuts, how can you expect them to be collaborative?
When you hear this new statement, I hope something in you clicks open and says yes, that makes more sense. This is because the universal truth of how things are, is carried within our genes for millions of years (you know, trails of gene mutation etc.). In a way they carry the memories of everyone who came before us, and it resonates and reverberates in the presence of truth and shrinks in doubt in the face of fluff.
So, cultivate this habit of scrutinizing the apparently smart or novel thing you come across. Ask yourself. Is this from the mouth or the heart.
(Pause here a bit to think before proceeding)
YOU MAY ASK: If the mouth-talk is so bad, why is it still so popular, even in places like HBR?
I think there are 3 reasons for that.
They have their place in the world. We all got benefitted by one trick or another that some business magazine suggested.
It is easy to make more of mouth-talk. Google a fact, add some references, cite one researcher, and voila! You have your latest HBR amazing article.
Such articles do have a big market. Most people are in the business of reading for entertainment (learning an anecdote: "wow never knew THAT") or ego service ("Hey, I just read 22 books! Like me, celebrate me!").
So, what happens to the readers of deep stuff, i.e. heart-talk?
3. Well, the readers of heart-talk are actually people who are busy IMPLEMENTING whatever they have learnt. They read one book and ruminate over it for years. Maybe they are not reading it again and again, but they remember its content, at every other day. They consume the content and synthesize it to make it into their own.
So naturally, they are not SEEKING VALIDATION for others, they are busy testing out what they have read. Hence, less people share the good stuff. We see it less. That is HOW it is supposed to be. Makes sense right that you see more of the fluff and less of the deep? Because yes, it is in the name, a fluff floats and a deep is harder to find.
Step 2. Setting up your Information Diet:
We all know "as you sow, so you reap", meaning what goes into your head determines what comes of it to the largest extent. No matter how smart you are, it is still going to be, "garbage in garbage out".
So, when you read anything, listen to any lecture, or attend any talks, think if this is garbage or gold. Try your best to only allow GOLD to enter your thoughts. Jim Rohn says about a guy, (paraphrasing and elaborating in my own words), "When I was not very successful, I used to wake up and read the morning newspaper, filled me up with all the murders, mayhem, and all that is wrong with the world. It was peaceful, I could excuse myself for not doing better." The self-talk says "How CAN I succeed? look at all of the chaos, they ruined everything for me. I feel relieved that I now had an excuse to be unproductive for a few more days. Starting with so much garbage, how could I ever do anything better?"
Most of us are doing the same, but instead of newspaper, we have facebook, YouTube, and emails. All the failures, missed deadlines, crazy conspiracy theories – all of them together to flood our gates. You have to stand guard on the gates your mind— if you are ever to become more than who you are today.
QUESTION: Well there are good things in these places too? And necessary things that I cannot just cut off. What do you suggest?
I know there are good things, to take advantage of it, you have to be careful that YOU USE the tool, instead of the TOOL using you. I will write in a later piece how they do it, but basically, as shallow things are susceptible to get more engagement, rather than long deep work, like this one – we are bound to face 10 mouth-talk for 1 heart-talk. Maybe even less. Which in summation makes you far worse than possible. So, you must be aware of how much time you are giving to these tools, if needed, un-follow, mute, hide people and focus on a few important ones. Have a routine set-up to make sure that you are not checking emails constantly, getting shocks, chunk all the dilly-dallying into one place and deal with it as you must.
Here I give you A QUICK TRICK TO DIFFERENTIATE BETWEEN garbage and gold: Consider the lifespan of you message.
By no means is this a comprehensive tool, but it is a good place to start. Whenever we write something, we always put in thoughts in proportion to the audience level, and the lifespan of the message. When we are posting an insta-story that disappears after 24 hours, we are much more likely to do something stupid there. When we are writing a critical project related email that can be dug up even a year from now and seen by a boss, we are more careful about how we structure it. Makes sense, right?
Whenever you are about to consume information, ask yourself, how long did the author think this would last? If it is a web-article, maybe a few years. If it is a book, think 10 years, if it is a facebook motivational-video, you can rest assured he didn't plan on this being seen, commented on or shared after a few months to max 1 year, as FB intentionally makes it harder to search anything you have seen in the past, to make sure the creators keep making more and coming back to spend time in the platform, i.e. becoming used by the tool, instead of using it.
So naturally, the amount of work an author has put in is mostly proportionate to the medium. And YOU can pretty quickly save a lot of time and energy by always reading the book, instead of an article or FB video.
Another trick here is to ask, how long has this been around? Let’s say, today someone makes a YouTube video on Strategies of War. On the other hand, you have the 2500-year-old book from Sun Tzu, THE ART OF WAR, that we still read. Which of these do you think will be around and be relevant in 10 years, 20 years, 200 years? You know that the answer is the book. As the Author Nicolas Nassim Taleb says, new things are usually replaced by even newer things while old things remain. Bonus treat: This trick not only works for information, but most things in the world. For example: job market, Many SOCIAL MEDIA experts are being taken over by DATA ANALYSTS, while sales manager remain strong. Many Investment Advisors are being threatened by automated systems, while Chemists and Doctors enjoy a steadier job.
Hence, the rule is, when in doubt, choose the thing that has survived longer. Be it a book, a wisdom, a job. Aim to read Marcus Aurelius's “Meditations” (written in the second century AD, and still has 4.2 rating on goodreads), or Jawharlal Nehru's “Letters from a father to His Daughter" (1929, and still having a 3.9 on goodreads), rather than going for the latest book where some influencer talks about all he know about success. There is no harm in supporting young authors, please do so, but take their insights with a grain of salt, as we are yet to know if their mantras of success work even in their own life, let alone if it can stand the test of time, right?
Step 3. Have a CORE FOCUS with a deliberate touch of VARIETY
When you have an IDEA, it gives you a language to TRANSLATE disjointed events and situation, into concrete REALIZATION, that enables you to take specific ACTIONS. The more ideas you have, the more they are likely to conflict with each other. It is like being confused looking at the symbol 8, and having trouble what to make of it, as you know in Bengali this symbol stands for 4 and yet in English this stands for... well Eight (in letters so that you are no longer confused). So, having too many disjointed philosophy lessons can lead you fail to take actions, cause analysis paralysis as it is called, or just leave you stranded.
Here, Ryan Holiday suggests that you should aim to study deeply a few masters, rather than moving around many. Instead of elaborating on this further here, I think it will be better served if you read these two articles about how to develop a proper reading habit.
1. "Becoming a Demanding Reader," by Ameet Ranadive: https://medium.com/@ameet/become-a-demanding-reader-a0c5c2d25dbd
2. "This is how reading is supposed to go." by Daily Stoic / Ryan Holiday. https://dailystoic.com/this-is-how-reading-is-supposed-to-go/
Please take 5 mins to skim through these two articles first, then come back here to read the rest below.
Key takeaway, if you have not gone through the links above: As Adler and Van Doren describe in their book, "How to read a book" “To be informed is to know simply that something is the case. To be enlightened is to know, in addition, what it is all about: why it is the case, what its connections are with other facts, in what respects it is the same, in what respects it is different, and so forth. This distinction is familiar in terms of the difference between being able to remember something and being able to explain it.”
Once you have set the CORE, you understand that this alone CANNOT turn you into someone WHO CAN PRODUCE INSIGHTS
For that, with all the depth you cover, you need to develop the habit of studying something else that interests you just for the sake of it. It might be a book on math, while you are just a chef, it might be playing the drums, while you are a doctor. All disciplines, when mastered, reveal age old truths to you, unlocks hidden pathways in your brain, that at first opens up to help you with a new thing you are struggling with.
If you stick to trying to master something difficult as a habit, (daily or weekly challenges), you will one day be able to access these pathways to analyze past things you have read, and find interesting similarities among all pursuit of depth.
For example, I started taking ukulele lessons 75 days ago, for the first time. The teacher, Cynthia Lyn, (I picked her as my only master, and decided to go deep into the course she has on YouTube, containing 89 lessons. But one thing she said one the first lesson struck a chord within me (a chord, get it? 😛😅). She said, "when you are practicing the Ukulele (for those who do not know, it is kind of like a small guitar), your fingers would hurt and not know how to move around. Your aim is to practice every day, even if for 20 minutes, instead of practicing 2 hours just once a week. Daily practice has a better chance of building your muscles than brute force, done sporadically." I tried this lesson for my Ukulele lessons and within two weeks, I found the benefits. Moves that I thought were not possible by my hands where suddenly easy after a deliberate battle with difficulty every day. The muscles moved to save me, calluses form to make the fingers stronger. In the two days, I had broken nail and a blister on my fingers, and within 60 days, I could put on the high-tempo music from Avicii's WAKE ME UP — even if imperfectly, I had never thought I will be in this place.
But once I saw the results of deliberate practice, I was able to take this lesson to everywhere else. I started writing daily, just a week ago. And today the result is I have just written the first draft of this modestly sized article within just 3 hours. Previously I used to struggle for DAYS and MONTHS to finish even ONE article of 500 words. This is what happens when you allow yourself to learn in tangents, listen to your inner voice. Do not expect all lessons to come this quickly though, I had also taken comics drawing classes in parallel to the Ukulele lessons, but I am not in a position to tell such an inspiring anecdote from that comic drawings.
Step 4. Mindfulness Meditation:
This part might seem a bit more baloney at first sight, as this cannot be really understood by just observing or reading, and it does not intuitively make sense at face value. Probably because throughout history not many have reached such a state of awareness, for it to become a strong enough part of our body's memory. Anyone who wants to tap into this realization must walk the path of it.
In the last 3 months, I have meditated for a total of 20+hours, taking 10-20 mins every-other day. What I find this has allowed me to do is to silence the chattering voice and listen to all the other minions inside my brain do the work for me when I sit to do something. I try to worry about myself when I am writing, allowing all the words to flow through onto the keyboard.
The important role here for my intelligence is to go and work on adding value to the flow of information from my heart to the page. Fix the spellings, add the links, find the name I do not remember etc. But the intelligence is not allowed to speak up and judge my realization, holding me back from expressing myself to the best of my depth. This is the most important reason why I like Abdullah Al-Rezwan Fuad's anonymous blog of Mostly Borrowed Ideas, it has the same effect of writing freely, not worry about what people may say to him, enables you faster.
A SHORTCUT (I dare say) to better writing:
If mindfulness meditation is too much to do, you can practice at least silencing your ego while you produce your content using a simple trick. this yourself even without a practice of meditation, by starting to write, and decide beforehand that this is not for posting anywhere. The ego sees there is no point in giving your heart feedback if now one will see or share this message, so the EGO goes backseat and lets you get on with it. This makes your capacity to learn, admit mistakes, and improve at a magnitude of 10x or 100x pace, You can learn to code, or sing songs or even cook, and tell yourself that I am not going to show my work here to the public for "such a hardworking girl you are" reinforcement, And suddenly during all of these learning, you will flow to the things you most WANT to learn, which usually create the best base for all future progress. It would not be possible if instead of variety, you only chose to pursue things that are most fashionable.
However, in all of these exploration into tangents, I still recommend following one industry insider, or one guru, so that you are not confused by options, as I mention before. For example, I take all my physical exercise advice from just my mentor from the office Toufiq bhai, who has transformed himself in the last 7 years. No need for me to do 3 different diets from 3 experts on YouTube in a month. I just take one what he says and implement it for a few months, get back and take feedback every 2 weeks to track progress. I have not really seen much results in this goal of mine, but this goal is about building a lifestyle of healthy living for the rest of my life and not the fitness transformation facebook post. So, time is hopefully on my side.
Here again, you can see this practice is like a coil, just like how you choose the topics to dive into (pick some core ones and explore some outside), you can do the same with any Guru in any discipline, pick one to follow, and keep your eyes open to occasionally study tips from others. A combination of these two habits will propel you to find new insights daily.
Caution:
Not everything that resonates with your inside may be the truth. The more intelligent one is, the more crazy things they are willing to believe. So every time you have a Eureka moment, don't run out naked like when Archimedes Coined "Eureka!" happened. Instead let it rest, recheck, have some feedback from others and THEN post it.
This writing of my has been cross checked by at least 5 people before I am posting it here.
Conclusion:
There is so much more one could share here, for example, building a habit of consuming daily newsletters or podcasts or articles from your selected experts in any discipline. In time, this practice hammers in the virtue from them into you, as every bit of their commentary is just one piece of the puzzle of their mental model. Once you have enough, you will be able to access their minds in any trouble. Like Derek Slivers wrote, when in doubt, he drafts a detailed question to his gurus, and then elaborates it by thinking what they would have asked by seeing this. They he revisits and tries to anticipate what his gurus may suggest. By the end of the exercise, he no longer has to write to them, and he has found his answers. As he says, (paraphrasing and elaborating a bit) "most of them have never met me, but they have helped me in so many situations with what could be called very personal guidance."
For today, think this is far bigger an answer than we were aiming to give, but then again, 'I' did not write it, it was all thanks to the minions in my head, running around and collecting all the references at different corners of myself, managing to build something cohesive and concrete for a reader to follow.
Thank you Tanzia for the question. about 7 years after the last time we talked for some university assignments, I think has the potential to help many more who are willing to do the work to build the wisdom.
Lastly: TO ANSWER your ORIGINAL QUESTION about recommended sources of insights. (yes, was not going to just beat about the bush without returning to answer the original question.)
Here is my list for recommended reading to start this journey into becoming more:
Newsletter: Tim Ferriss - 5 bullet Friday / Tim Ferriss Show (a true guide into the world of the esoteric)
Podcast: Deep Questions by Cal Newport (tackles how to build resilient habits that can categorize, control and execute all you want to do and all you want to become)
Book: Awareness- The Perils and Opportunities of Reality (deep truths and contrarian opinions mixed in beautifully)
Wish me luck. hope this helps you take a step towards as Timothy Robbins says, "Awakening the Giant Within" (haven't read the book, but heard great things about it).
And please, Stay Curious. Keep Growing. Keep Creating.
Radi Shafiq
Development Professional | Author | Artist
Enhancing the GOOD in the World— One conversation at a time.
24 October 2020 (drafted on 19 August)
Dhaka