Pulling My Brain Out Of Retirement

It is true that you are smarter than you think. But is it true that you might be getting dumber every day?

I’ve been through college for 4 years now and I still feel a lot of pain when it comes to learning. Its cumbersome and painful.

I sit with a book or a course for a while, I feel restless, my leg starts shaking, and if its something challenging, I feel downright queasy.

Why? Well, having inculcated the habit of constantly jumping from one context to another over years of schooling would make anyone restless.

Even my Master’s Degree Syllabus touches the surface of really deep topics and instantly jumps over to another domain altogether in the next semester, leaving no room for anyone to actually delve deep and understand the fundamental truths of the subject matter.

Bottom line is : Learning takes time. It takes patience. It takes consistency.

And guess what- We’re not up for it.

Blame social media, blame Netflix, Youtube, or anything, it is true that the constant bombardment of information is slowly killing our brain. Be it a school teacher trying to shovel math equations down your gullet or an infinite scrolling feature on an app that feeds you an endless train of thought.

To get ahead in life we need to process what we observe. What we see. What we learn. One step, one byte at a time. Instead we are being fed with Terabytes of information over years together, and our brain just cant’ keep up.

When you read something or observe something, your brain kind of takes time to mull it over and really play with the incoming thoughts, trying to figure out where they fit in to your already existing beliefs and values.

Everything you consume mentally, should have a sink in time. Whether its seconds, minutes or hours, depending on what you’re seeing. We very often forget people’s names because when we were having the conversation where they mentioned their name, we weren’t really paying attention. Our mind was in a million places. There is negligent involvement in the moment, because we are either living in the past, or in our fantasy of what we want our immediate future to be.

Ive been sketching for a long time now. Its a very rewarding process, but at the same time requires a lot of hard work and practice to get better.

Although, it almost always not really practice, that the skill demands. This is what school taught me kicked in.

To draw new things I started copying Pinterest boards line for line and judging myself on how well I “copied” the work of art onto my bristol board. But soon enough you realize that rather than beating yourself up for not being able to draw like someone else, and mechanically practicing and perfecting the “technique” or “short-cuts” to be perfect, you should rather exercise your mind, and draw from imagination, which is what 98% artists do.

With that and so many other things, like studying math or learning new concepts in science made me realize-

Its true. Most of us have. We’ve been spoon-fed the attitude of having a quick fix for everything, where every answer is a google search away, every skill has a cheat sheet, every subject has a course or a tutorial ,we have stopped churning the life engine that is capable of doing wonders. Because the answers to all our problems are right there. We have stopped taking notes, making mind maps, ruffling through multiple references(online or offline), trying to use a pencil and paper to work out “the math”, call and talk to your professors, seek mentor-ship, discuss the problem with your friends, mull it over and over and over until you get it done.

Because its not worth the effort when you can just google it.

And it isn’t google’s fault really. Its what we have made of it. We demand search engines and social media platforms to spoon feed us with education and entertainment, because we have lost the will to go the extra mile.

The next innovation won’t happen if you just sit there and wait for some shortcut to get you your next big hit. You need to stick your ass in that chair and use your brain to figure it out. No more short cuts. No more cliff notes. No more cheatsheets.

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