7 quotes from Sönke Ahrens That'll Make You Think Clearly (Instantly)
~ #The best way to deal with complexity is to keep things as simple as possible
Learning is impossible.
Nobody teaches you how to do it in school.
Then you do your exams, get your grades back, and… They suck.
And still nobody tells you how to get better at learning.
For a long time I was stuck in that group. Sadly, I never learned how to study during school. Only in my 30s I’ve started to get better at it.
How?
With a book called How To Take Smart Notes.
I learned how to take better notes. But this book is much more than that. It’s a master class on how to get better at thinking, learning, and deciding.
This book has lots of takeaways. Here are the key ones you can use right now.
"those who are not very good at something tend to be overly confident, while those who have made an effort tend to underestimate their abilities."
It's hard to know what you don't know when you know too little.
And this happens all the time.
First time I started coding, I thought I knew a lot just because I could write some functions in Python. Then I changed jobs and started working with people who had been programming for decades. After a week next to them I realized I knew nothing.
And this stays with you. Even after 2 years of writing code, I still consider myself crap. I still have a looooong way to go.
Don’t act like you know everything (because you don’t). Stay humble, question everything, and pay attention to your lack of knowledge.
"The best way to deal with complexity is to keep things as simple as possible"
Complexity is sexy.
I started taking notes in the simplest way possible. I had one note. Then I wanted to customize fonts, colors, and layout in my note-taking app.
Then I thought “This isn’t making me productive… I need more”. At some point I felt like Tony Starks talking to Jervis trying to figure out how to save The Avengers. I was adding metadata to all my notes. It became a pain to write a single note.
It lasted 1 week.
I realized I was optimizing things to avoid doing real work.
Now I know I don’t need anything fancy to take notes. All I need is to save interesting ideas and do something with them. That's it.
Complexity sucks. It’s a way to complicate simple things to make them seem more credible. And it’s not better 99% of the time. Simple makes life easier.
"Multitasking is not a good idea"
You have so much to do nowadays it’s easy to feel like you have 7 kids under the age of 3 wanting your attention.
The solution? To multitask.
But the thing is... It. Doesn't. Work. For 2 reasons:
You're not comparing your performance to anything. So you think you’re being productive
You do it so often you think you're good at it (when in fact humans can’t multitask)
And the more you multitask, the crappier you get at multitasking. But you don’t know that for the 2 reasons above.
Train yourself to focus. Do one thing at a time. It will change your life.
"Real experts [...] don’t make plans"
When experts make decisions, they don't think logically about it. They feel what's right and do that.
There was a study where expert paramedics, paramedics who just finished training, and paramedic teachers saw videos of other paramedics giving CPR.
Their task was to spot who was an expert and who was a beginner. The expert paramedics guessed who were the experts with 90% accuracy. Beginners just guessed (50% accuracy).
And the teachers? Wrong in most cases. They thought beginners were experts, and experts were beginners.
That's because experts don't follow the rules so closely. They've internalized critical knowledge. So they don't have to actively think about what they're doing. They just "know" what's right. They rely on instinct. Gut.
Only years of experience can help you build this type of decision-making. So when teachers saw they didn’t follow the rules so closely, they thought they were beginners.
Planning is good if you have no idea what you’re doing. After you get the gist, act. It’s the only way to develop a decision-making process focused on experience (and your gut).
“decision-making is one of the most tiring and wearying tasks, which is why people like Barack Obama or Bill Gates only wear two suit colors: dark blue or dark grey. This means they have one less decision to make in the morning, leaving more resources for the decisions that matter”
Every time you make a decision, the next one gets a little worse.
You won’t feel that from breakfast to lunch time. It’s at the end of the day things start to derail.
Suppose you made too many decisions during your day. Then your night might look like this:
Watch Netflix instead of going to the gym.
Eat junk food instead of vegetables
Go to bed late and sleep like crap
You’re less clear on what you want. Less sure of what to do. Less confident in your choices.
That’s why, for example, I’ve been eating the same breakfast since 2017. I don’t make great food choices in the morning. So I removed that daily decision from my life.
One decision that removes 1.000 others.
I’m no Barack Obama. But I can’t remember the last time I stressed about breakfast. Every time I wake up I only need to think about one thing “Are there enough ingredients to make breakfast?”
That’s it.
I also wear the same jacket to work. The same shoes. The same pair of jeans. And I know these decisions I made months ago help me to stay focused, healthy, and productive today. They compound nonstop.
Try it yourself. Decide on one breakfast. One book. One thing to work on.
If you want to make less stupid decisions, stop relying on willpower.
"Most people still think about thinking as a purely internal process, and believe the only function of the pen is to put finished thoughts on paper"
For years I used only my head to think.
The problem?
My head kept spinning around the same things. Over and over again, until 2 things happened:
I did something stupid
I forgot about it and the thoughts died.
As I discovered the power of writing your thoughts, I realized it’s much easier to think as you write.
Here’s an example.
When I write articles, I usually start writing them in my head. It’s all rainbows and unicorns. Everything flows from word to word.
Then I sit down to write. I realize the masterpiece I formed in my head is crap.
That’s what writing does to your thinking. It challenges you to face reality. You can think as you think. But it’s better to wirte as you think.
For the past 6 months that’s what I’ve been trying to do. Whenever I have an important decision to make, I open the notes app on phone and write down what I’m thinking. It gives me clarity. And frees up my brain to zone out and randomly find solutions to problems.
Document your thinking. It’s the only way to get clear on next steps.
"You only learn by teaching others"
For 10 years I did the same thing in school: I tried to memorize everything.
I read. Again and again. And my grades still sucked. I guess they sucked because I tried to memorize everything 2 days before a test.
Anyway… Learning this way was (and still is) crap.
How do I know this?
Because I started to write online. It’s the best way I found to learn something because:
Teaching others makes sure I know what I’m talking about
Explaining a concept clearly makes sure I know what I’m talking about
This is why whenever I’m trying to understand something, I write an article about it.
For example, I didn’t know much about barefoot shoes. So I wrote a few articles about it and now I think it’s the greatest thing ever.
Weight gain was another thing I didn’t fully comprehend. So I wrote about it and now I understand it better.
Teach others something you know (or want to learn). It’s the fastest way to internalize knowledge and become better at something.