The greatest things in life can also be the worst.

Sophocles said, "Nothing vast enters the life of mortals without a curse."

In *Essentialism*, author Greg McKeown talks about the "[success paradox](https://substack.com/redirect/695201e2-204b-4548-81dd-de476274fb80?r=3jw8b)" and it's a clear illustration of something great turning into a curse. Here's how he defines it:

> **Phase one.** We have clarity of purpose, enabling us to succeed in our endeavor. 
>
> **Phase two. **When we succeed, we gain a reputation as a go-to person, and we are presented with increased options and opportunities. 
>
> **Phase three. **When we have increased options and opportunities, it leads to diffused efforts as we get spread thinner and thinner. 
>
> **Phase four. **We become distracted from what would otherwise be our highest level of contribution.

When an author writes a book that took three years in solitude to write and helps them break out into the world as a "Domain Expert on X," everyone will want to talk to them about X. Now they're getting invited to give TedTalks, appear on podcasts, and write columns for *The New York Times*. With each appearance, they become a bigger name and more people want to hear from them. Naturally, this leads to more invitations and the cycle continues.

Gone with the wind are the mornings of five-hour writing blocks and week long research retreats. They're famous now! They have obligations to their fans. They have to make money.

But giving TedTalks isn't what helped them achieve "success." It was being alone with their keyboard in the still small hours of the morning writing one word, and another one, and another one, and over again 60,000 times. But since they haven't been able to research or write at all since their book came out, they've got nothing else to go on. Maybe they've written a few blog posts here and there, but nothing close to the quality of their first book.

Now that they're pressed for time, they cut corners on their next book. They don't research as much, they don't think critically about the data and their implication, there's no clear organization structure--the second book is a joke.

That is the Paradox of Success.

Being well-researched and thinking critically about their first book lead them to write a smash-hit. But the success that followed prohibited them from working hard on their second one. They became distracted from what would "otherwise be [their] highest level of contribution."

It wasn't intentional. They weren't distracted by the limelight. They were just doing what they thought they had to do and said "yes" to everything.

Winston Churchill said, "You can never tell whether bad luck may not after all turn out to be good luck." I think *you can never tell whether good luck may not after all turn out to be bad luck*.

Beware of the curse.

The greatest things in life have something hidden inside that's not.

Beware of the curse

I.
"Names don't constitute knowledge", the great professor and physicist Richard Feynman declared in an [interview in 1973](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsgBtOVzHKI).

I know that A2 + B2  is equal to C2, that equation is called the Pythagorean Theorem, and it was named after Pythagorus. But I couldn't tell you why it works or how it works. I may be able to cobble together enough words to make a somewhat decent description, but I'll look like a fool trying to explain it to someone who has never heard of Geometry before. **I have the knowledge of it, not the understanding.**

That's not the only thing I'm lacking knowledge about. I've read 200+ books in the last few years and could probably summarize off the top of my head about 15 of them. The rest I may be able to recognize the title and paint a broad picture of the author's ideas, but that's about it. **I've read the books, but I don't understand the books.**

II.
This type of person, someone who has a lot of knowledge but no understanding, is what the blog [More to That]( https://moretothat.com/knowledge-is-not-understanding/) has penned as a "Dumb-Smart Person." A Dumb-Smart Person (DSP) is someone who has acquired loads of textbook knowledge, but doesn't know how to handle a situation that isn't pre-defined by something they've learned. They *know* the information, but don't *understand* it. What little information they do know, they're unable to adequately recognize when it's not in the context they've learned it in.

This is what I call context-dependent knowledge and it's a lot more common than you think.

Take for example Kyle here.

![Street Life - Standing](//images.ctfassets.net/nk2hkdvz2uym/1rkFpWaMMGlLpo4LCcS997/e147a15845d8845f82f70cbd2a636583/Street_Life_-_Standing.png)

Kyle is a studious college senior who loves to read biographies of businesses and entrepreneurs. He's getting a degree in business, but it's not scratching the itch as much as he would like. He needs real examples, not case studies.

He had just finished reading Benjamin Franklin's biography and was struck by a well-known story about Ben Franklin asking a foe to borrow one of his books. The foe accepted and upon returning the book, the foe engaged in a friendly conversation with Benjamin. The foe was now a friend. Kyle thought this was incredible. Dealing with conflict has always been awkward, but this was a simple strategy that he could add to his toolkit to deploy when the time comes. Kyle noted the story in his "second brain" and moved on to the next read.

III.
Awhile later, he was put in a situation where the book tactic would be of great use. During one of his classes, students were assigned a group project. He happened to be paired with Lex, another brilliant but not-so-kind and arrogant student. Kyle knew this was his opportunity to apply the learning from Ben Franklin's life.

"Okay," Kyle thought, "If I ask him to borrow a book, he's going to have to lend it to me, right? Then I'll read it and when I give it back to him, I'll tell him my favorite points and ask what his were. Genius."

Operation Ben Franklin was a go.

"Hey Lex, I know you like reading Angela Duckworth's work. Could I borrow *Grit*? I've heard great things and would love to read it."

"You can just get it from the library..." Lex claps back.

"Oh, right. Sorry thanks." Kyle mumbles out, embarrassed. *Well that didn't work*, he thinks to himself. *What went wrong?*

What went wrong?! You used a strategy that worked in 1750 where books were scarce and hard to get. You didn't understand the deeper knowledge of that strategy. You were stuck in context-dependent learning and failed to apply the *knowledge* from that situation into a modern-day environment. You got cocky with your "second brain" only to realize you may not be as smart as you think.

Kyle is a dumb-smart person who fell prey to context-dependent knowledge–only being able to apply the learning of something if it's in the exact same context in which you've learned it.

This has happened to me countless times on my journey to learn programming. Watching a tutorial and following along step-by-step gives me some knowledge of how certain programming languages work, but if I don't understand *how* it works or *why* it works the way that it does, I won't know what methods to use in what situations when I'm trying to build things on my own out in the wild. I have to work really hard at applying methods and concepts outside of the specific use case the tutorial taught me. 

If I learn how to use the useEffect() hook from React one way, I'll fail to recognize how to use it when it's called for in a different context. Programming knowledge is *very* context-dependent. I've found that practicing on your own is the only way to overcome that obstacle and get out of tutorial hell.

IV.
We can picture a Dumb-Smart person's journey through knowledge and understanding as two mountains. The Mountain of Knowledge on one side and the The Peak of Understanding on the other.
![1-01](//images.ctfassets.net/nk2hkdvz2uym/4gSCFCZFewIm6hqNh2Zlfy/27fb6f8cee3e52d746559072b0d91eb3/1-01.png)

Splitting the gap between the two is the Trough of Failures–an essential part of moving from The Mountain of Knowledge to the Peak of Understanding.
![2-01](//images.ctfassets.net/nk2hkdvz2uym/2B5fH7Jbv8x3BaRZdR7S8V/9a10a385c753c290739e052d15c64702/2-01.png)
A dumb-smart person fails to recognize the gap between the two, assuming it's one big mountain that they've successfully conquered.

"Finally," they think. "I made it."

Man oh man do we have news for you.

V.

To get to the Peak of Understanding, one must do two things:

First, recognize there's a gap there at all. An arrogant, ego-filled academic will never reach the Peak of Knowledge if they think they are already there.

Second, they must trek through the Trough of Failures. They do this by taking their knowledge, applying it in certain situations, and seeing where it fits and where it doesn't. This is often accompanied by endless amounts of failures because that's how we learn.

With each application of knowledge, we get closer and closer to reaching the Peak of Understanding, until, finally, we've made it and can communicate the concept or idea in a simple way.

It sounds simple. And honestly it really is. The biggest obstacle I've seen (and faced myself) is having the desire to make the jump from one side to the other in the first place. Ever since we started learning in school, we were awarded with memorizing knowledge:

- What's the powerhouse of the cell?
- Who led the Revolutionary War?
- What year did Christopher Columbus set sail to the New World?

We were never taught, nor had the use case for, a deeper understanding of any concepts. As long as we could memorize some key vocabulary terms, things turned out quite alright.

And this doesn't change as life goes on. Signaling your knowledge is the second-most important thing to signal in human society, not too far behind wealth. If you can sprout off a few facts about World War 2 and entertain a dinner table with crazy Greek mythologies, people will assume you're intelligent (Unless you're annoying while doing that. And it's very easy to be annoying in that situation.

People who have knowledge may get remembered, but those who seek to understand will never truly die.

Knowing the name of something doesn't mean you understand it.

The Mountain of Knowledge (And Why Dumb Smart People Never Escape It)

In 2015, *Wait But Why* author, Tim Urban, popularized the analogy of "The Chef and The Line Cook" in a 4-part blog series about Elon Musk. In the post, he described Elon as being a chef, someone who can take pieces of a puzzle apart and put them back together in a new, creative way.

Alternatively, he described line cook as being those who understand how to follow recipes. They know how to make a delicious steak with all the right ingredients, but if they're out of seasoning or something goes wrong, they can't salvage the dish. A chef, on the other hand, is able to make something just as scrumptious without the necessary components. In other words, *they understand each ingredient enough to know how it reacts with something else.*

[Urban put it](https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/11/the-cook-and-the-chef-musks-secret-sauce.html) this way (emphasis mine):

> The chef reasons from first principles, and for the chef, the first principles are raw edible ingredients. Those are her puzzle pieces, her building blocks, and she works her way upwards from there, using her experience, her instincts, and her taste buds.\
>\
> The cook works off of some version of what's already out there---a recipe of some kind, a meal she tried and liked, a dish she watched someone else make.\
>\
> ...But what all of these **cooks have in common is their starting point is something that already exists**. Even the innovative cook is still making an iteration of a burger, a pizza, and a cake.\
>\
> At the very end of the spectrum, you have the chef. A chef might make good food or terrible food, but whatever she makes, it's **a result of her own reasoning process**, from the selection of raw ingredients at the bottom to the finished dish at the top.

For me, that analogy has been instrumental as a mental model to view certain professions and people in those professions. Being a cook is incredible, but I have mad respect for the "chef's" of their field. But today, I'd like to take that brilliant analogy one step further by examining some of the best golfers out there.

What I Learned Watching Golf
----------------------------

Golf has been a great fascination for me as of late. Not just playing golf, but watching it, studying the mechanics of a swing, understanding the history and the golfers who shaped what the game is today. Of course that would be impossible to do without looking at Tiger Woods.

The raw talent, enthusiasm, and grit are obviously some of the defining characteristics of Tiger, but what fascinates me the most with him, Phil Mickelson, Jordan Spieth, and other professional golfers is their ability to manipulate the golf ball in their favor.

Amateur golfers hit hooks (when the ball hooks at a sharp left) and slices (when the ball slices at a sharp right) all the time, but not on purpose. They do it because the club face is too open or closed at impact, their swing isn't shallow enough, or they are swinging from outside-in instead of inside-out.

Professional golfers are able to hit fades, draws, hooks, slices, and stingers on command. Sometimes they need to do this because of where the pin is placed on the green, but other times it's because their tee shot went 15-feet into the woods and they have to hit through trees. These shots are known as "Escape shots" and Phil Mickelson might be the most infamous at doing these. Just check out this video:

What him and Tiger understand are all of the tiny factors that play into how the golf ball will travel. **What amateurs do on accident, professionals can do on purpose.** They understand if the ball is further back in the stance it will fly lower, if the club face is open it will go much higher but not as far, and so on. **They understand the ingredients to create the "dish" they're looking for.**

But what they do even better than the fundamentals of the golf swing are the feel of the game of golf. The things we can't see with our eyes, they are consciously aware of. If you could copy the exact swing of Phil Mickelson, you *still* wouldn't be able to manipulate the ball like he does. He has one extra component of understanding how everything in the game of golf works together and is able to manipulate it.

This extra step, understanding not just the ingredients but the invisible force that affects those ingredients in any skill or field of talent is what the ancient Chinese call the Tao or Way. Robert Greene calls the Way *the dynamic *and explains it as "The living force that operates in anything we study or do."

If becoming a master is at 10,000 hours, understanding *the dynamic* comes at 20,000 hours.

But it's not that simple.

Playing golf for 20,000 hours will not make you as good as a professional golfer, just like going to the gym for 20,000 hours won't make you an athlete, or running track for 20,000 hours won't make you an Olympian.

To understand *the dynamic*, one must have an insane amount of practice time. But they also must *reflect* on every second of that practice time.

When Tiger Woods hits a shot into the trees, he knows *exactly* why it went into the trees. He knows this because he's studied his swing at practice, at the driving range, and on film to know what he does that makes the ball go left when he doesn't want it to. To understand *the dynamic*, each failure, victory, challenge, and setback must be viewed with a lens of reflection to answer the question, "How can this make me better?"

It sounds cliche, but it's true. Only by reflecting on your failure can you get any better and that much closer to becoming a master and understanding *the dynamic* in life, work, and relationships.

*Disclaimer: The Dynamic is not a new age, spiritual force that you can manipulate with crystals. It's simply an analogy to explain what happens when all the aspects of a certain field and profession are working together as one.*

Chef and The Line Cook: Going Deeper

> Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.\
>\
> -- John Keats

I. Senior year of high school was one of the most nerve-racking times for me. Not that I was worried about my academic success, which I'm glad I wasn't because no boss has ever asked what I got in English that year. But because what seemed like the rest of my life hung on one fateful decision: **what my plans were for after high school.**

The uncertainty most people face their senior year of high school as they consider which college to attend, where to live, or where to work is undeniable. And for some, it's almost overbearing. But as I've come to learn in the few short years since I've graduated, that uncertainty was only a glimpse of what will come the rest of life.

The ability to not just deal with but thrive with uncertainties is what the young poet John Keats calls *Negative Capability -- *one's ability to remain in uncertainties and mysteries. Cultivating Negative Capability for those tough life decisions is important, but Keats was alluding to a much more creative use of the term, saying that Negative Capability "went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously.[1](https://daltonsbookshelf.substack.com/p/negative-capability#footnote-1)"

II. Shakespeare's ability to put himself in the life and minds of each of his characters, even those that were evil, without judging them is what Keats so admired about his writings.

But Shakespeare wasn't the only creative who could do so. Mozart's ability to utilize different styles of music without forming opinions that some were better than others was how he practiced Negative Capability. Robert Greene points out in his book, *Mastery*, that Bach's music was very different from that of Mozart's. But instead of dismissing Bach's compositions as less than his own, he studied Bach's music and intertwined the two styles for a new, different style of music.

That's where the benefit of practicing Negative Capability pays off. If you're quick to dismiss an idea, philosophy, book, or person, you don't allow yourself to explore those mysteries waiting to be discovered. Greene explains in order to practice Negative Capability:

> "You must develop the habit of suspending the need to judge everything that crosses your path...You do anything to break up your normal train of thinking and your sense that you already know the truth."

Read books from authors you haven't heard of.\
Watch YouTube videos from channels to which you're not subscribed.\
Look at problems in fields unrelated to the one in which you work.

But most importantly, be okay with the mystery that comes with asking questions about why things are the way they are.

> "The need for certainty is the greatest disease the mind faces."\
>\
> -- Robert Greene

III. With anything in life, there's a caveat to this. Although practicing Negative Capability is important, it becomes dangerous if you never get out of that mindset. Once you've evaluated all the options and considered all angles for how to solve a problem, make a decision and run with it. Sitting around and pondering ideas is an important practice, but if it's all you do you'll never create anything inspiring or original.

Doing that just reminds me of this scene from Good Will Hunting:

With that, I leave you to have an inspiring, thought-provoking, curiosity-filled Monday and hope that spirit continues throughout the week.

Being Okay With Negative Capability

If you're only preparing for the disaster you can imagine, you're going to be unprepared.

No one expected the economy to crash so hard during the Great Depression until it did.

No one expected (or maybe they did but didn't prepare) for a disease to put the entire world at a halt until it did. So, we had a lack of protection equipment for doctors, nurses, and other first responders. Hospital's had no idea how to handle the high capacity. Businesses had no idea how to sell to customers who couldn't come into their stores.

**No one prepares for the disasters they can't see.**

That idea stems from [something Morgan Housel said on _The Tim Ferris Show_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szQwdZDiVh4&t=4s) this week. They were talking about risk and how to not lose all your money when you're financially panicking. Housel explained it's important to have more savings than most people would think is necessary.

If cash returns 1% and stocks return 10%, that 9% difference your cash _could_ be earning will eat you up every day of the week. But if the cash on hand ensures you don't have to sell your stocks at a loss because you need the money during a financial crisis, that cash actually returned much more than just 1%.

The most important part of any plan is planning on it not going according to plan.

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