(My sister is a school teacher. Patient. Methodical. Creative. Watching her work

(My sister is a school teacher. Patient. Methodical. Creative. Watching her work I see the similarity in cognitive processing. She works pretty continuously. She searches for new ideas. Does her research. Thinks them through. Tests them against experience. And never considers learning ‘done’. Which is something I think separates persistent people from those who are too desirous of outcomes rather than processes of continuous improvement. Family members are good tools for learning about yourself. Anyway, the difference between us is just one of scale. The process is the same. And I can’t say that for everyone. There is something different about people who think ‘what don’t I know’ from those who think in terms of ‘what I know’. Maybe it’s some sort of insecurity or paranoia at first. Or maybe it comes from being younger than your peers, or surrounded by adults. But there is definitely a difference in how some of us exercise our minds. What can I do, versus what can’t I do and why? What do I know versus what don’t I know and what can I do about it? Why do you think that, and why do i think this, and what can I do to decide? This is the essence of ‘seek to understand’. Most people seek something rather short term by comparison. Like whether they like it or approve of it, whether it’s useful or not, whether they agree or not, whether they understand or not, whether they want to pay the cost of it or not. But there is a group of us who just remain confident that we don’t ‘know’ anything so to speak so much as that we’re continuously learning what does and doesn’t work. And that this learning is our ‘entertainment’. So that we simply experience far more hours of thought on any subject than others do. And really, whether you’re terribly bright or not is not quite as important (except on the margins) as whether you just stick with something long enough to become an expert in it to such a degree that there are very few others with your level of expertise. we are rewarded in life for the number of masteries we accumulate. mastery is valuable. But it takes lots of time.)