I have met such a group of people: whether it is history, humanities, international relations, economics, psychology, finance, they are all involved; Any topic can be talked about endlessly, and it can also summarize the conclusions that make everyone nod frequently; All walks of life are also omniscient, and it is the development trend in the next 3 to 5 years.
The knowledge reserve of these people always seems to be much higher than that of the people around them, but after getting to know them, I found that they are not particularly outstanding. The mind is full of "knowledge", but in fact there is nothing.
Those who talk a lot are actually poor people who have fallen into the "high-level cognitive trap". There are usually the following types of advanced cognitive poor.
01 Self-entanglement
I once saw such a story in a magazine.
After a group of people got lost in the desert, after a long trek, they finally saw an oasis. But when they got closer, they found it just a mirage.
This happened twice, and everyone began to hesitate whether to move on to the next oasis.
There is only one person with a mild intellectual disability who rushes over with excitement every time he sees an oasis. Others laughed at him for not even being able to tell the difference between a mirage and wasting so much energy.
Eventually, people with mild intellectual disabilities have gone through many mirages and finally managed to reach a true oasis. Those who thought they were smarter than him lost the courage to move forward in the entanglement and were forever trapped in the desert.
Luo Zhenyu mentioned in "Luo Ji Thinking":
What is known is more likely to drain our energy than what we don't know because it makes us hesitate and fall into deep self-doubt. ”
It is the path under your feet that achieves the goal, not the truth heard.
A person is always thinking about it, and even if he has advanced cognition, he will end up with nothing.
In 1821, the French scientist Arago and his student Fresnel proved that light is a transverse wave through polarization experiments.
Arago has been studying in the field of optics for many years, has read a large number of academic works, and knows that the mainstream view in the academic community is that light is a particle.
He feared that his findings would be too subversive and that if he made a mistake, he would be rejected by the academic community. On the contrary, Fresnel did not understand the game of academia and was only bent on making his results public.
Arago repeated the experiment several times, and after confirming that there was no problem with the results, he still suffered from insomnia every day.
Even though Fresnel finally agreed to publish **, he asked for his name to be withdrawn the day before the ** submission.
Half a month later, the conclusion that "light is a transverse wave and not a particle" shocked the academic community and became the basis of modern optics. Fresnel became an overnight success, while Arago, as his mentor, spent the rest of his life in regret.
In this world, there are many people who are not doing well because of lack of knowledge. RatherThe more I knew, the more I worried, and before my life could change, I was exhausted.
Cognition can be a ladder to climb upwards, or it can be a shackle that binds oneself. Only by stopping the entanglement can we stand at the top of cognition and see the wider world.
02 Procrastination
When I first graduated, I was working for an established car company. Xiao Gong, who joined the company in the same year, often reminded me:
The market share of traditional fuel vehicles will definitely decrease in the future, and if you want to stay competitive, you must either learn new energy-related skills or develop a side business. ”
Over the past few years, I've developed my writing skills and eventually transitioned to a new industry before the mass layoffs in the automotive industry.
A few days ago, I met Xiao Gong by chance, and while thanking him for his suggestion back then, I asked him curiously: His ** is so accurate about the prospects of the industry, and he must have a good development now.
Unexpectedly, after asking, I learned that he was still in the same place in the original company. Although he was not laid off, he suffered a salary cut and had to worry about the mortgage every month.
If you think about it carefully, Xiao Gong is the epitome of the "advanced cognitive poor": before going to bed, he imagines various feasible routes, but when he wakes up, he still walks the old way.
Cognition can help us see the direction, but to achieve the goal, it depends on the power of action.
Lyubichev, a scientist in the former Soviet Union, published more than 70 monographs in dozens of fields such as mathematics, biology, and philosophy, with a cumulative word count of more than 10 million. When asked how he was so productive, he replied briefly: "No delay." ”
In his 56-year academic career, Lyubichev has always adhered to one principle: start doing whatever comes to mind.
The ticking second hand gives him a sense of urgency as time passes. Driven by this sense of urgency, Lyubichev always acted first, no matter how things turned out.
In the end, he used fruitful results to tell the world that many seemingly insurmountable difficulties can always find solutions as long as they take action.
Writer Li Shanglong said: Do it after you know the basic knowledge of a thing, don't wait for the so-called perfect time, because you can never wait.
Many things become more and more difficult the more they are delayed, and only action will have an answer. Third-rate cognition plus first-class execution is always more valuable than first-class cognition plus third-rate execution.
03 "Just knowing" type
Zhihu netizen @feng once ate at a small restaurant in his hometown. When the boss heard that he was a returnee master, he immediately called his son. The boss's son asked him a few questions from the quiz show.
Because the majors involved in the question are very unpopular, netizens admitted that they don't know the answer. When leaving, he heard the boss praise his son: "What you don't know as a top student, you know as a primary school student." ”
Years later, netizens became executives of a listed company.
When he returned home for Chinese New Year, he found that the owner was still running the small shop, and his son was just a helper in the shop.
Wang Shuo once said a very profound sentence:
Some people seem to know a lot of things, but at best they only know the molecules, and they can never become real intellectuals. ”
The simple accumulation of fragmented information seems to increase knowledge, but it is difficult to help us really grow.
Only by internalizing cognition as a building block for growth can we bridge the gap between "knowing" and "doing".
Duan Yongping once said that he had not read a book in its entirety after graduating from university.
A netizen who claims to read 100 books a year commented: "Entrepreneurs who don't like to read have too narrow a cognitive scope, no matter how successful they are now, they are destined to not go far." ”
However, contrary to this netizen's **, Duan Yongping was later not only named an "Outstanding Business Leader" by Asia Weekly, but also became a figure on the list of the world's richest people.
How did Duan Yongping do it?
In his work, he always identifies what he lacks in the field, and then acquires relevant knowledge by reading books, financial reports, listening to speeches or attending industry conferences.
Because of this, Duan Yongping does not pursue extensive knowledge, but always applies the theories and methods he has learned to ongoing entrepreneurship or investment.
This reminds me of a quote from the book "Cognitive Breakthrough": "What can make you break through cognition is cognition, and everything else is just superfluous information." ”
In an age where everyone has access to the internet, it's more important than knowing what to know about what you should know.
Blindly obtaining information will not elevate one's life, but will trap oneself in a cocoon of cognition.
On the contrary, when you sift through and absorb the information that is useful to you, you can renew your thinking and form your own formula.
At this time, every bit of awareness you add will eventually become a step under your feet, leading you to a higher platform.
Some people say that the "poor people of advanced cognition" say that the meaning of raising cognition is supposed to allow frogs who are confined to the bottom of the well to see the world beyond the mouth of the well.
However, some frogs at the bottom of the well use the gravitational formula to prove that the wellhead cannot be crossed, and use the risk model to warn themselves not to act.
Eventually, they met other frogs at the bottom of the well through the Internet, and after exchanging information back and forth, they came to a consensus that the world was indeed only the size of the wellhead.
The mere pursuit of knowledge does not change the world, nor can it change the fate of individuals.
Stop internal friction, unite knowledge and action, and focus on yourself, so that you can use what you have learned to achieve life.