Information consumption is on the rise. Rather than learning for the sake of doing something, people now “learn” because they think it will automatically make them successful.
Correlation doesn’t equal causation.
Reading lots of books won’t make you successful.
Reading lots of books will definitely help you become successful, if you already have a compelling reason to gain that learning. Without that reason and without a target, your learning will be distractive and directionless.
It is for this reason that Jim Rohn said, “Reasons come first, answers second.”
Which begs the question: What are you actually pursuing?
Are you pursuing something compelling enough to clarify what you need to learn and become?
Or, like most people, are you caught in the web of information-addiction? Of “ever learning” but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.
In the book, Skin in the Game, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, “Things designed by people without skin in the game tend to grow in complication (before their final collapse).”
Taleb also said: “True intellect should not appear to be intellectual.”
Yet, we live in a world that prizes head-knowledge over courage and purpose. True learning doesn’t come from acquiring information, but in being forced to handle situations that reshape how and why you live.
You could potentially learn more about yourself in five minutes embracing your fears than you could reading 100 books. The best meditation is facing emotional resistance.
According to systems scientist and MIT professor, Peter Senge:
“It is tempting to think that just because one understands certain principles one has “learned” about the discipline. This is the familiar trap of confusing intellectual understanding with learning. Learning always involves new understandings and new behaviors, ‘thinking’ and ‘doing.’”
Wisdom means you know what to pursue and why. It requires you actually live what you understand. You must be continually disrupting your own worldview by taking on bigger challenges in the real world — where the value of your thinking is put to the test.
Wisdom requires what Cal Newport calls, “Deep Work.” According to Newport, most things people pursue are shallow, rather than deep.
Shallow activities are easy to replicate. Almost anyone can do them. They require almost no bar of entry.
Reading books has become shallow work, because it is so easy to replicate. Anyone can pick up a book and read.