The good sh*t sticks phenomenon
You were never meant to remember it all
20,000 hours.
I ran the numbers and that’s how much time you spent confined within the prison walls often referred to as school.
Three questions for you:
How much information were you exposed to?
How much knowledge did you gain?
How much wisdom stuck with you?
If you’re anything like me, your answers are:
Boatloads
A smidgen
Practically none
Now this isn’t meant to be an assault on the education-industrial complex. There’s plenty of people fighting that good fight.
I am compelled to call out a lesser known, yet equally troubling system called the note-taking industrial complex, with your permission of course.
Have you ever felt that nagging sense of crippling despair after reading a great article, finishing a fantastic book, or listening to a fascinating podcast?
What’s that all about?
It’s because you are terrified that you won’t remember any of it.
So what’s the common advice to combat this?
“Oh, you just need insert-perfect-note-taking-method….”
“You gotta check out the building a second brain course..…”
“Just get the Anki app so you can review flash cards with spaced repetition…...”
No, no, no. Forget all that crap.
Who actually goes back and looks at their notes anyway?
The good sh*t sticks.
I heard this line from Cal Fussman in his appearance on The Tim Ferriss Show and my crippling despair vanished in the blink of an eye.
And get this, I didn’t jot that line down in Evernote, but its stuck with me for over four years. That’s all the proof I needed.
Our minds aren’t meant to remember every piece of information we come across. Thank God.
You are supposed to filter 99.99% of the information you consume (the junk) like your water purifier. To make room for the .01% that’s actually useful to your specific situation.
I used to furiously scribble down notes and quotes that I thought I “needed” to remember.
How stupid.
Your mind is more powerful than you think. It knows what your current situation is better than you do. So it captures the information it needs to be converted to knowledge and later to wisdom.
No fancy note-taking method necessary.
You may read 100 newsletters today and save countless paragraphs, but walk away with one golden nugget. That was your good sh*t.
You may read a 500 page book tomorrow and highlight hundreds of lines, but only remember one big idea. That was your good sh*t.
You may listen to a 3 hour podcast next week and jot down dozens of quotes, but one single line lingers in your mind. That was your good sh*t.
Your good sh*t will be different from mine.
We could be exposed to the exact same information and each latch on to a different bit.
That one interesting idea that just won’t get out of your head was the one you needed in that moment. The rest can be happily tossed into the discard pile.
If you can’t remember it later, it was never worth remembering at all.
So keep consuming information like a great white shark on a feeding frenzy knowing that the good sh*t will find a way to stick.
Trust your mind to remember what is useful to you at that point in time.
If you forget something, even something you want to regurgitate to sound smart at happy hour, don’t sweat it.
You were never meant to remember it all, but I promise you — the good sh*t sticks without any conscious effort on your part.
The next time you consume some information consider this — what can’t you not stop thinking about?
That’s the good sh*t phenomenon at work.
Totally disagree? Let me know why in the comments below.
...this was some classic good sh!t...