One of the problems with trying to write just about anything today, and sharing it with anyone, is the fact that it feels like a waste of time since the same thing has probably been said a hundred times before…and probably been said better and more clearly. We live in an age of information overload. It’s difficult to believe that just 150 years ago a personal library of over 100 books would have been considered a luxury.

Today, we live in a world where there is a metaphorical fire hose of information pouring into our consciousness from every direction. Books, magazines, social media, and especially the internet have deluged us with information of every conceivable kind. And yet, we don’t seem to be any more educated in many ways than the average person from several hundred years ago.

As a side note, I read an interesting post on twitter here, that makes the point about how all of the breakthroughs surrounding AI are essentially simply a synthesizing of all of the information that has been created by human beings, and put out onto the internet. It’s not really creating anything new, and without all of the information created by human beings, it would be completely worthless. It’s basically curating all this information, reassembling it into new forms, and making it accessible in a simple, easy to use way. He says “The real genius behind AI is not the machine itself, but the centuries of intellectual free exchange that made its intelligence possible.”

But that’s another topic for another day. Back to my main point. The point is that there are massive amounts of amazing information available to virtually everyone alive today that has access to an internet connection. But somehow, as a society, we seem to be more ignorant than ever in many ways. So the obvious question is why, with all the information that is available to us, are we still so ignorant? I won’t even try to answer that question, because there are obviously dozens of reasons that could be given, and it’s probably a combination of lots of them.

I have found, however, that there seems to be a cheat code that a lot of people haven’t really figured out yet, but is really obvious after you recognize it. And that cheat code is creating a shortcut to wisdom by tapping into the minds of people you respect and admire. Instead of reinventing the wheel, why not tap into all of the work that has already been done by people you admire? Why not ask them what books they read that had the biggest influence on their thinking and their world views. After all, they didn’t come up with their worldview, their habits, their knowledge on their own. They got it from other people and their ideas as well. So, by reading the top 5-10 books that have influenced them the most, you’re very likely to understand them a whole lot better and begin to develop the same pattern recognition that they’ve developed over time.

If this is true, then another obvious question becomes “what type of person do I admire and would I want to emulate?” This is another area where our society seems to have gone off the rails. Our society admires lots of people and traits that seem far from admirable. Our society is saturated with the idea that success is measured by wealth, status, power, popularity, etc., etc. What you virtually never hear about in our society is admiration for people who value truth, integrity, and character. I’ve asked quite a few people over the years to name the top 5 people who they most admire from throughout history, not including anyone they know personally. It usually results in some blank stares and a lot of “hmmm…I’ve never really thought about that.” Which is kind of amazing if you think about it. After all, without a goal, how on earth does one create strategies and tactics to achieve anything worthwhile? Try it sometime and see what the response is.

Another way of thinking about this topic, which is a little easier, is to break life down into different aspects and then find a person or persons who are really excellent at each aspect and try to emulate them. People are good at different things, and rarely are they good at everything. So you might want to emulate different people at different points in life or when facing different challenges in life. So whether it’s financial, spiritual, physical, relational, etc., areas you’re trying to work on, maybe different people and ideas are appropriate at different times in your life.

But I also think that, in some ways, this evades the more important, original question, of who do you really admire. Because, after all, a huge part of building a successful life is being able to balance all of these different aspects of life in a way that leads to the life that you really admire.

One statement I’ve heard repeatedly is “don’t ever take advice from an unhappy person.” It seems really simple, and maybe it’s not entirely true, but there is definitely something to the idea. You could express the same concept in many other ways. For example:

All of this leads back to another, even more important question. And that is “what is man’s earthly purpose in life?”

That is way too complicated a question to address in this post, but it begs the question of if you can’t answer that question, how could you possibly decide what strategies or tactics to pursue in living life? I think if individuals in our society would take this question seriously, we would make a whole lot more progress than we’ve been making.

So, what is the point of this entire post? I guess it’s just an apology to the reader for most of my posts. The reality is that virtually all of my posts will just be pointing out one tiny little idea, either through a video link, a podcast, an article, or some other tidbit of information, that I find fascinating. You may or may not find it interesting and/or helpful because of where you’re at in life and the experiences you’ve had.

Life is complicated. If there is anything that I’ve learned from studying Austrian Economics, religion, history, politics, and science, it’s that life is incredibly complex and as human beings we’re way more confident than we ought to be in assuming that we understand complex concepts. Just one example is that we’re REALLY bad at separating causation from correlation. Another example is Hayek’s knowledge in society problem.

But with the information overload that we’re all facing day to day, I think it can really be helpful to step back and think less in terms of “what are the right answers?” and more along the lines of “what are the right questions?”.

“What is my ultimate purpose in life” and “who are the five people I most admire” can be helpful to anyone. And after you’ve given them some thought, a great life hack is to find our how those people who you admire got to where they are now. Wherever their ideas came from, you would probably do well to pursue those same sources of information.

Anyway, it’s just a thought. Like I said at the beginning, it’s an idea that probably has already been described much better and clearer somewhere else. But maybe it can be helpful to someone, somewhere, sometime. And if not, hey, at least I’ve tried to provide more information for the AI to sort thru, digest, and spit out in another form…;)