The most practical skill you can learn is working smarter. But here’s what nobody tells you about working smarter: it often looks like you’re working slower.
A programmer might spend 20 hours wrestling with a difficult algorithm, then have an insight in the shower that solves it in 10 lines of code. Those 20 hours weren’t wasted—they were necessary for the insight.
Most people never get past superficial engagement. They fragment their attention into smaller and smaller pieces — checking messages every 6 minutes, switching tasks 40 times per hour, and treating their minds like a news feed instead of a supercomputer.
Working smarter often requires looking less productive in the short term.
That marketing brief you spend three hours perfecting might look identical to one written in 30 minutes. But the thoroughness of your preparation will be reflected in every subsequent decision.
Your first thought is what everyone else thinks. Your best thought comes after you’ve thought long enough to forget what everyone thinks.
You don't have to be special to be successful.
Ordinary people can do extraordinary things by choosing to be what most people are unwilling to be: consistent, hardworking, patient, and determined.
Simple, but not easy.
I lie on the beach like a crocodile and let myself be roasted by the sun. I never see a newspaper and don't give a damn for what is called the world.
-- A. Einstein's 1918 letter to Max Born
"My mind is much slower than most of my colleagues’ minds, but I developed my own ways of learning things. Keeping records of what I was learning, working things out in my own way, and notebooks and so forth, that enabled me to achieve" - Kip Thorne, Nobel Prize Physics
@NobelPrize "My mind is much slower than most of my colleagues’ minds. Keeping records of what I was learning, working things out in my own way, and notebooks and so forth, that enabled me to achieve despite having a slow working mind. We can all succeed in different ways." Kip Thorne
"Find your own way of functioning... I struggled for the first year and a half as an undergraduate... but I developed my own ways of learning things.
So I advise students, find your own way and your own directions that you can be successful in."
- Physics laureate Kip Thorne
🩵 Rematamos o #FIGaE_2024 en Bruxelas este fin de semana! Grazas a todas as persoas asistentes e poñentes, pola vosa participación e aportacións tan interesantes. E á @axenciaGAIN polo seu apoio e co-organización, así como á @EmbEspBelgica A ciencia galega ten moito que decir!