Mental Sieves

Imagine talking with a group of friends. One brings up a cognitive science topic they are studying and you are intrigued. Imagine reading a blog entry about hand-crafted vs factory-made goods wherein someone relates a breakthrough in 3D printing. Imagine hearing about a news story where a well-respected investor explains why the buy and hold strategy will have diminishing returns in the near future. Without some basic contextual knowledge, it’s near impossible to understand or retain what is being said.

This is a problem of a mental sieve: You are ingesting information, but ultimately discarding it because you don’t have a framework for thinking about it. Or worse, you are processing the information and retaining the wrong information to create a flawed idea in your head which you will use to make decisions in your life.

I’ve found that investing time to learn the basics of a topic you think is interesting or important pays dividends for a very long time. After learning the basic fundamentals, you are able to not only passively retain more information related to the topic, but also build a better intuition for what other people in that topic area think is important.

Being familiar with introductory material in a disparate set of topics also makes meeting new people easier. Having a common ground is conducive to better conversation, especially for more niche topics like knowledge of a location, culture, genre of literature, historical time period, etc.

Additionally, investing the effort to learn topics adjacent to or outside of your traditional interests supports multidisciplinary work. Simple examples include creating software solutions in non-technical fields, adapting a journalism style to playwriting or screenwriting, or using material science knowledge to enhance handcraft hobbies.

In my past, I spent much time traveling and learning political geography. As a result, I’ve found interacting with foreigners to be much easier when I can name a few cities in their country of origin or speak a few phrases in their native tongue or identify their country’s flag. When I hear news stories about the political climate in specific parts of the world, it is much easier to remember because I know something about these places.

Another salient example is investing. While there are still large gaps in my understanding of how equity is traded on the markets and the different types of securities, after reading a couple books about investing and speaking with similarly-interested friends, I find it easier to evaluate new financial startups and ideas. My intuition for spotting a good (e.g. ride sharing, cryptocurrency) whose financial model seems unsustainable or whose value is greatly inflated. Knowing this basics also makes it easier to classify and archive new information in my head that I hear relating to finance.

Exploring a diverse set of topics seems useful for many reasons and aligns well with the common mantra of expanding your comfort zone by taking steps outside of it.

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