Learning less everyday

This website has been undergoing some identity crisis lately. Well, the website can’t actually undergo identity crisis, but somehow, it’s easier to write when referring myself as a third party.

Anyway, as much as I want to “think and grow”, I’ve been reminded that “thinking” itself might be counter-productive to growing. As The Power of Now suggests, we are drawn to think, sometimes so much so that making “thinking” as an end itself. Doing puzzles, sudoku (which by the way if you haven’t checked this out, is highly addictive) etc are ways in which we engage our mind, apart from thinking about work, relationships, and life itself.

My Tai Ji teacher recently highlighted that (in general), people who needs to think a lot at work are normally those who progressed slowly in Tai Chi. I casually mentioned that I also fall into that category…. and then there was silence…. and then we laughed!

I think (yikes!) the “thinking” which is restricting growth is normally the conscious thinking that we do. Conscious learning cannot be applied at will. You can only hold so much thought at any one time. To react to an ever changing situation, conscious thinking is a poor processor. You need a processor which is much more intuitive and with potentially limitless capacity to adapt to our ever changing environment. I think we need to “push” conscious learning to the other-than-conscious mind. To learn less consciously and learn more intuitively.

I hope to use this as the theme for this blog from now on – learning less everyday. Let’s see where this will take us.

p/s: this reminds me very much of Yoda – unlearn what you have learnt.

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