The reason we’re so increasingly intolerant of long articles and why we skim them, why we skip forward even in a short video that reduces a 300-page book into a three-minute animation — even in that we skip forward — is that we’ve been infected with this kind of pathological impatience that makes us want to have the knowledge but not do the work of... See more

real wisdom is usually not frictionless. It’s hard to seek out, hard to understand, and something that reveals itself in time. However, if you do have a habit of getting cozy with this type of content, you’re not alone. Three things that will change your life, though:

1. Wrestle with ideas before saving them for later


2. If an idea is truly indispensable,

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My countervailing advice to people trying to understand something is: go slow. Read slowly, think slowly, really spend time pondering the thing. Start by thinking about the question yourself before reading a bunch of stuff about it. A week or a month of continuous pondering about a question will get you surprisingly far.