What is valuable knowledge?
Here is a concept: the source of knowledge.
I have been to Tibet, which is very close to the source of the Yangtze River. It's hard to imagine that the source of the mighty Yangtze River seen in Shanghai is so narrow, as if I could stop the water flow by lying down.
Just like the source of a river, the source of knowledge is the place where knowledge originated and was just created.
The concentration and quality of knowledge here are extremely high, and there are rich underlying logic and basic concepts. Downstream, the farther away from the source, the more tributaries there are, and the more impurities there are. When a piece of knowledge is mixed with too many impurities, I'm afraid it can only be mixed into chicken soup.
Starting from the source of knowledge, we can divide knowledge into primary knowledge, secondary knowledge, tertiary knowledge and tertiary knowledge.
First-hand knowledge is some fresh thinking that is being studied, thought and verified. It may be fresh and hot in the minds and notebooks of these researchers.
Second-hand knowledge is information with high gold content and faithful reporting, such as Wikipedia and some books about the underlying logic, such as The Wealth of Nations. There are also some relatively neutral industry survey reports; There are also high-quality teaching materials and certification training in various industries that have been systematically sorted out.
Third-hand knowledge is a best seller, and these words have been changed into words that are easy for the public to understand and spread. However, because of the need for low cognitive resources to understand, a large number of cases and stories have been added, and some inaccurate concepts have also been added.
You often see four-handed knowledge. According to these best-selling books and theories, most people write a lot of chicken soup and add too many personal stories based on their personal experiences (how did I earn 2 million yuan an hour? ) or emotional factors (understand this is from China). Put forward an idea, but instill countless strong chicken essence.
(Excerpt from: Classical Supremacy)
Only by knowing the source of knowledge and learning to distinguish the first, second, third and fourth hand knowledge can we better distinguish which knowledge is valuable.
Generally speaking, there is a high probability that the following contents are good knowledge:
First-hand research papers, industry academic journals, and industry latest data reports;
Famous school textbooks, first-hand information recommendation of large-scale open online courses, Wikipedia;
Books and articles with low-level logic, high thinking quality and slightly difficult to understand;
List of books and beans recommended by industry leaders and industry bulls.
When you find valuable knowledge, how to study more efficiently is particularly important.
In this era of information explosion, there is too much knowledge to learn.
And those big cows, such as Mr. Wu Bofan (the author of Bofanri's Record, next column), didn't even have a draft when they were doing "Dongwu Relativity Theory". As soon as he sat down, he made a noise-these gods always seem to be reading a lot of books and talking about concepts that you don't understand at all.
It is also 24 hours. Why is the gap so big?
People often ask me-how much time do you spend reading every day?
In fact, this is not a problem of time management, but a problem of cognitive efficiency.
Growing up, we heard the most words-why are you playing again instead of studying? As long as you study, no matter how slow you are or what books you read, adults will not bother you. Over time, it is easy to form an idea that learning is always right.
This idea is wrong. In the era of lack of knowledge and non-lifelong learning, learning is definitely better than not learning well. But? In today's era of knowledge explosion and lifelong learning, it is not a question of learning or not, but a question of cognitive efficiency.
The same investment in cognitive resources will have completely different returns, which is the difference in cognitive efficiency. People with low cognitive efficiency do low-level diligence. The real secret of cattle people is to learn with cognitive resources many times higher than the most essential resources, so the cognitive efficiency is many times that of you.
When is new knowledge most effective?
Cognitive psychology believes that adult learning is most efficient when there are three preconditions, which are goal orientation and immediate feedback. Simply put. It is most effective to solve current problems and learn useful and moderately difficult knowledge.
12 I can't learn oral English well in China, but I can communicate simply after studying abroad for 3 months. This is because you only need a place to practice when communicating abroad. Foreigners are tolerant of your pronunciation and accent, and the difficulty is moderate. At this time, if all three conditions are met, efficiency will be high and learning will be fast.
On the other hand, you can understand why it doesn't mean much to you to brush the list of xx books that managers must read. These cognitive resources are not purposeful, lack of practical environment and have different difficulties.
Those WeChat articles of the headline party, such as "I missed 100 million to read this article", even created a "problem to be solved" out of thin air. Think back-even if you do encounter a way to get you a billion dollars, is this your current problem? Is this your current level? Is this something you can use after learning?
Therefore, from now on, I will learn to read less useful books-starting from the problems I encounter and looking for suitable cognitive materials from the fields I can practice.
In this way, reading will be much less and the problem of too much knowledge will be basically solved.
Finally, back to the topic, why am I willing to pay for the knowledge I don't understand?
Because, paying is cheap!
In the era of knowledge and information payment, if you can get something with money, it is the best and simplest way to find something valuable.
Teacher Li Xiaolai put forward a concept in The Road to Wealth Freedom: attention > time > money.
Then use money to buy other people's time to save yourself time, and then use the saved time to do things that grow and accumulate. That's not what happened.