ADVICE FOR NERDS This should be obvious, but for people who excel at learning, a

ADVICE FOR NERDS

This should be obvious, but for people who excel at learning, and love to learn, I have a bit of advice that you might want to consider:

“Your understanding is not a deliverable, it is not productive, it is a cost.”

There is a big difference between learning and entertainment. There is a big difference between problems and puzzles. There is a big difference between going from problems to books, and from books to problems.

Whether you chew hallucinogenic roots, drink alcohol, play video games, watch movies, read books, or learn new things, you are just a consumer of other people’s efforts, and not a contributor.

We do not get paid for consuming. We are paid for producing. Consuming may do little harm, but it does no good.

So if you are learning, if you are experiencing, it may be rewarding, but it is just entertainment.

Either one learns – bears a cost – for the production of an output, or one is just a dead weight on one’s peers.

I have this problem in technology fairly often although because of my current occupation, less so than I used to. But I still hear and see it everywhere in all walks of life.

Learning is not an intrinsic good. It is a form of conspicuous consumption – a form of hedonism, a luxury, a spending of an inheritance. And in business it is a parasitism.

So learn only to produce something. That is what we pay each other for.

If you want to learn for recreational purposes realize that all you’re doing is a more expensive and time consuming and arguably less physically harmful form of recreation.