Knowledge for a Rainy Day
When you're so focused on losing, you never enjoy the gains.
In creating my latest TCM Threads article, I got to reflecting on my tendency to use the “save” functionality with certain posts on Instagram. My practice of highlighting passages in books to then transfer over to a Word doc on my computer; to bookmark newsletter articles on my browser bar to have on hand for some future date when I’m inclined to reread them.
Inevitably, I never go back to them. Or if I do, it’s to scratch the itch of trying to remember “where I heard/read something” that pertained to a current conversation or thought I had. I wasn’t going back through the content to interact with it, update my interpretation of it, or decide if it added value to my life.
When I take a honest look at these habits of mine, they stem from a fear of being forgetful. A fear that I will be wasting my time if I read something for 30 mins and not have any takeaways from it. Those are 30 mins I can’t get back, so I must optimize my time and be continuously growing/striving. (This ties into the “Maximizer” mindset I outlined in my previous Pick Your Choices article that I’m still grappling with - always a work in progress :))
So in a sense I’m trying to create an insurance policy for myself against losing knowledge with these different “save and record” tendencies. If I convince my inner conscience that I have filed this piece of content somewhere in the folding cabinets of my cerebellum, then I get to tell myself it wasn’t all a waste. I saved something for a rainy day. An artifact to reference.
It’s really a fear of my finitude and limitation as a human, that masquerades as a “productivity/memory” hack.
In my article : Which Version of Me Are You Looking For, I talk about how elusive our memories are as humans. As much as I’m aware of that, there is this rebel inside me that doesn’t want to believe it. Or simply won’t accept it. That’s not said in the light of some entrepreneur that ‘doesn’t take no for an answer’, but rather a true melancholy of realizing so much of living happens in the now, and my memory won’t be able to recall all the good moments or useful pieces of information I’ve encountered in my life.
Memorization is linked to another fear of mine. The fear of embarrassment. At some level, I’m always trying to avoid that feeling I got in grade school when I would forget to do an assignment or study for a test. I can’t describe the feeling, but it was never pleasant to have. Just pure stress. And honestly, that feeling probably became an unconscious motivator for me to be organized and accountable. Because I dreaded the emotional response associated with the consequences of being laisez-faire.
That fear lingers in me to this day. The ideas that trigger the fear have morphed. They’re not prompted by angst of forgetting homework, or having a bad mark on a report card, but from work, uncertainty of the future, and other daily living scenarios.
It wasn’t until I heard Joe Hudson say, “We are scared of the emotional result of things, not the actual thing itself,” that unlocked an insight for me. Many triggers of fear for me weren’t the underlying fear itself. They were just the delivery vehicles. It was that emotional discomfort, freeze moment I would have when I was little, thinking I was in trouble, forgot to do an assignment, was spontaneously called on during class, or had to read out loud, that I was ultimately fearful of.
“If you’re scared of feeling an emotion, you’re already in it.” - Joe Hudson
My attempts to be more braced for uncertainty or follow up questions at work, or to have information top of mind when conversing with someone laddered up to guarding against that emotional discomfort response. As I listened to podcasts there would be moments in which I would become extremely anxious. And I realized it was when I would put myself in the podcaster or their guest’s shoes and wonder if I could do what they’re doing. Could I be an elegant speaker, linking ideas from various domains, and recalling specifics of studies/findings fluently over the course of a 2-3 hour conversation, with no mess ups?
The anxiety was really my body saying, “Hey Mitch, this situation has the potential to leave you embarrassing yourself and looking forgetful. Imagine if you don’t have something to say or can’t remember a specific fact while you’re trying to record a podcast, you would be mortified.”
But as I said, I’m fully aware of how forgetful the human mind is, and deep down I know many people would just laugh at the situation should I ever encounter it. I’m also fully aware that people are way more concerned about themselves and rarely recall embarrassing moments of other people, because they are paradoxically also thinking about not making a fool out of themselves. But my body views that emotional response to an embarrassing/inattentive event as an experience to be avoided at all costs. So every time I question if I’m remembering things properly, I go to the worst case scenario happening. That’s the binary thinking aspect of fear in full effect.
With the ever increasing role of technology in our lives and access to information, the running insight has been that school age kids (our future generations) don’t have to remember information, they have to remember how to find the information. And what’s even scarier, is that with the rise of AI, finding it and interpreting that information is damn near frictionless. I have my own reservation with AI (another future Threads article coming), but it would be hypocritical of me to say I’m not manifesting a nearly identical behavior. I’m wiring my brain to be more of a search optimization engine, rather than a direct knowledge sponge when I store knowledge away to come back to. Because a piece of me is avoiding facing the reality that I may forget something. If I never commit it to memory I can’t forget it; I just have to remember where I stored it. That’s my scapegoat.
Obviously, it takes energy to remember. Huberman has numerous podcasts about leveraging alertness, attention, and focus to optimize learning/remembering things. There’s also studies that outline how grand master chess players burn thousands of calories just thinking in a game of chess. That mixed with our biologic wiring to preserve energy, it makes sense why we don’t commit to learning/remembering everything. It’s work.
But I’m beginning to embrace the notion that there is tremendous value in challenging our own memory, and engaging in thought deeply, without fear of forgetting it at a later time. There is a quote at the beginning of a self help book I read, where the author specifically calls attention to the reader (who is very likely to be a person to hyper obsess on processes, create rules for themselves, and develop a plan of action) to specifically not take notes while reading the book. He says, “The good shit always sticks.”
That quote, mixed with the scientific understanding that curiosity is one of the best mental states/mindsets to be in for learning, should help ease the anxiety behind always trying to remember and recall everything you come across.
In a Q&A episode of Modern Wisdom, Chris Williamson talked about how people shame him for always referencing quotes. But his explanation for it resonated with me deeply. He says maxims and aphorism serve as a gateway into the entirety of the concept. You won’t have a trigger that just unlocks your memory of the entire concept. Rather you begin at an entry point that consequentially helps you connect the corresponding flow of ideas. It’s why mantras are powerful, because they recenter you around an underlying ethos that often times you can’t even put words to, but that guide your state of mind.
“What you know that you don’t even know you know is far greater than what you know you know.” - Naval Ravikant. There are feelings you have that have no words to describe them. Thoughts that are felt subconsciously that you never articulate to yourself. An example Naval references is humans can’t explain the rules of grammar yet we execute them near perfectly when we speak. We can’t always consciously convey knowledge, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there.
I recall drawing a comparison of my brain to a filing cabinet a few years ago. Upon encountering something in life, or learning about a subject, I file it away in memory along with thousands of other things with a rare chance of ever revisiting it again. But once something opens the drawer and pulls the file out, things start coming back to me. Say you’re at the bar and someone mentioned the Ottoman Empire falling in World War 1; it’s as if all my files associated with AP World History, 9th Grade, Mrs. Schmitt, and the like all start resurfacing. The Ottoman Empire served as a maxim to explore all the following concepts/memories of that time.
That’s probably not the best example or even the most relevant in the context of a “mantra” like aphorism, but I think it highlights the unique ways in which memories flow back to us that we didn’t even remember we had. Memories that we never consciously tried to store, but that have nevertheless found homes in our brains.
My aspiration for the next few months is to foster a more curious approach to the content, and information I come across. Instead of reading something and book marking it or sending it to a friend because I really like it, I want to sit back and reflect right then and there, on why it resonates with me. Spend a little extra time, energy, and attention in the present to experience the full effect of that train of thought for my own benefit, instead of hoping I can recall it in a conversation later to sound informed, smart, or pithy. (Note: it’s not my intention to do this with EVERY thing I come across, but rather those pieces where my previous “storing” habits want to kick in)
Joe Hudson, in that same podcast episode mentioned above, talked about the benefits of self-understanding over self-growth. Self-understanding begins with curiosity, and allows for emotional clarity. Self-growth rather, stems from a more motivational, conflicting origin that aligns to emotional management. When we try to force ourselves to do something, we naturally put up resistance. The word “should” always seems to garner some inner resentment. And Joe says this is exactly why self-improvement doesn’t work as well as self-understanding (in the long term).
I may be a bit of a lone wolf when it comes to this fear of remembering information or experiences, but I think the lesson to be learned is that life isn’t meant to be lived with this dreaded sense of hoarding, needing to hang on, or scarcity driven mindset, but can only be fully seized when you lay the struggle down to rest.