☕ saturday mornings - march 4, 2023

trivialities, joyless existence & the intelligence trap

Happy Saturday!

I hope you’re having a great start to your weekend.

What I’ve been up to:

• I flew home from British Columbia on Sunday, had three busy days of school, then packed my bags for Halifax, Nova Scotia. From the west coast to the east coast!

• I'm at the Sobey School of Business at Saint Mary's University for a Venture Capital Investment Competition. Yesterday, my team placed 2nd in the competition. Today, I’m exploring Halifax before heading back to Toronto. I’m heading to the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia then a local

Here's a recap of the most interesting ideas I've explored this week.

Arrive. Relax. And, enjoy.

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✍️ quote i’m pondering:

Charles Bukowski, American poet, on losing sight of the big picture:

“We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't.

We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.”

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📚 book passage i loved:

For, let us ask ourselves, honestly and seriously, whether we would want to erase the sad experiences from our past, perhaps from our love lives, whether we would want to miss out on everything that was painful or pain inducing—then we would surely all say no.

Somehow we know how much we were able to grow and mature precisely during these joyless periods of our existence.

― Yes to Life by Viktor Frankl

Sigmund Freud: “One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.”

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💡 idea from me: the intelligence trap

Winter Landscape (Jan Steen, 1650)

Why aren't smart people happier?

Growing up, the education system told me I was intelligent. I'd ace math tests, write great essays, and breeze through french class. As a result, I latched part of my identity on being "smart". It felt good. I felt special. The more I doubled down on school, the better results I received, the more intelligent I felt.

School, so I thought, sets you up for life. The game of school became the game of life. The better grades you received, the smarter you were, the better job you'd get, the better life you would have.

I felt was winning the game.

Each stellar grade became a step on my stairway to greatness.

But, I've become less convinced intelligence is a worthy aim to devote yourself to. I've struggled to answer many of life's important questions. Through overemphasis on thinking my way through problems, I've been in my own head. Lost in thought, dizzy with desire, and starved for clarity. While others, supposedly less "intelligent", are happy as anything.

Last May, I sparked up a conversation with a 74 year old man in Salzburg, Austria. Keith. He had little education and only a small amount of money, but was filled with such joy and wonder and excitement. Effortless warmth. Keith had the eyes of a child seeing everything for the first time. He described his morning walk and conversation with a woman outside a local bakery like a child would describe Christmas morning. He wasn't "smart" from society's perspective. But all I could do was admire his intense love for life.

How could I say I was doing life right, while he was doing it wrong?

You'd think that intelligence would be a good measure of whether people get what they want out of their lives. That smarter people would make better decisions, learn from their mistakes (to make fewer mistakes), and solve their problems with ease. They'd have the mental horsepower to "figure life out".

Turns out, smart people aren't happier.

Intelligence has, on average, zero correlation with happiness.

To solve this puzzle, we have to return to the definition of intelligence. School tells us smart means good grades. But, across every subject, intelligence is measured in the same way: your ability to solve well-defined problems.

Well-defined problems can be very difficult, but they aren’t ambiguous. It's clear there's a problem. It's obvious that the problem needs to be solved. You can write down steps for solving it. There's a right answer. And you can get better with repetition.

But, unlike intelligence tests, life isn't a problem that can be "figured out".

Most of life's most important problems are poorly-defined. Questions like “Who should I spend my life with?” or “What should I do for a career?” or "How do I live a life I like?". There are no steps to follow and no clear answers.

Here's the kicker: well-defined and poorly-defined problems require completely different problem-solving skills. That's why people who score well on intelligence tests are no happier than people who flunk them.

Being an expert at solving well-defined problems, as school trains us to do, has zero impact on your ability to answer life's important questions.

There's proof everywhere you look. Some of the world's "smartest" people are terrible at solving life's most basic, but poorly-defined, problems like "be a good person" and "don't do illegal things". Christopher Langan, boasting an eye-popping IQ score, believes that 9/11 was an inside job meant to distract the public from his work. John Sununu, with an IQ of 176, had to resign as chief of staff in the American government because he flew to his dentist appointments using military jets. Bobby Fischer, one of the greatest chess players of all time, claimed the Holocaust didn’t happen. There's an ever-lengthening list of bankers that commit insider trading, lawyers that perjure themselves, and professors that falsify data and harass students.

Smart people aren’t happier because we’re using a misguided definition of “smart”. We have to redefine what "intelligence" is. Naval: The only real test of intelligence is if you get what you want out of life.

As I reflect on my experience, there seems to be a gap between what I strive for and what I need to be happy.

I know that human connection lies at the heart of a meaningful life. Our most meaningful experiences are shared with the people we love. "Work can bring you a sense of fulfillment," Clayton Christensen writes, "but it pales in comparison to the enduring happiness you can find in the intimate relationships that you cultivate with your family and close friends."

Billionaires like Ingvar Kamprad and Larry Miller write memoirs in old age as cautionary tales. Warning young people to not devote themselves to work. To not live like them.

Regrets of the dying from Bronnie Ware

I understand this truth logically. Yet, if I look at my calendar, my days are full of work but starved of connection. Too often, I feed my time to family and friends like you'd feed a stray dog: with only the scraps that remain. Once work has taken its share.

But, connection isn't the scraps. It's the main course. It's what life is about. Life is this brief flicker of time we have, lit up by the people we share it with.

There is this gap between logic and intuition. Between understanding something on a surface level and embracing it in your soul. Between reading something and doing it. Between intelligence and wisdom.

I haven't figured out how to reign in my ambition, and stop it from running off a cliff. Me along with it.

I do well in school but I'm not smart. Not as smart as school told me. Or, not as smart yet.

Naval: You’re not smart because you’re unhappy; you’re unhappy because you’re smart. You can be happy and smart—it’s just going to take more work... The more you dig into certain deep truths, the freer and more peaceful you will become. That peace will lead to happiness.

First, I want to explore ancient books. The great thinkers of the past were obsessed with figuring out how to live good lives. It seems to be something we've forgotten, in lieu of progress, wealth, and status. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Seneca, Buddha, Confucius, Jesus, Marcus Aurelius, St. Augustine, even up to Emerson and Thoreau.

Second, I want to revisit the idea of surrender. Instead of trying to think your way through life, surrender asks you to be aware of the opportunities the universe drops all around you. It removes the burden of huge life decisions with the faith that life will provide you with the lessons you need, when you need them.

Rumi: When I run after what I think I want, my days are a furnace of stress and anxiety; if I sit in my own place of patience, what I need flows to me, and without pain.

Third, I want to spend more time with people who are good at solving poorly-defined problems. One way to spot them is to look for people who feel good about their lives. There is a ton you can learn from people who are happy.

Adam Mastroianni writes:

People who are good at solving poorly defined problems don't get the same kind of kudos. They don’t get any special titles or clubs. There is no test they can take that will spit out a big, honking number that will make everybody respect them.

And that’s a shame. My grandma does not know how to use the “input” button on her TV’s remote control, but she does know how to raise a family full of good people who love each other, how to carry on through a tragedy, and how to make the perfect pumpkin pie. We sometimes condescendingly refer to this kind of wisdom as “folksy” or “homespun,” as if answering multiple-choice questions is real intelligence, and living a good, full life is just some down-home, gee-whiz, cutesy thing that little old ladies do.

... If you don’t value the ability to solve poorly defined problems, you’ll never get more of it. You won’t seek out people who have that ability and try to learn from them, nor will you listen to them when they have something important to say. You’ll spend your whole life trying to solve problems with cleverness when what you really need is wisdom. And you’ll wonder why it never really seems to work.

All of your optimizing, your straining to achieve and advance, your ruthless crusade to eliminate all of the well-defined problems from your life—it doesn’t actually seem make your life any better.

If you’re stuck trying to solve poorly defined problems with your slick, well-defined problem-solving skills and you’re lucky enough to have a grandma like mine still on this Earth, my god, go see her. Shut up and listen to her for a while.

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❓ question i’m asking:

Question from Nix on internal validation and competence:

In total silence, total invisibility, when no one knows your name, when no one judges, when no one even looks — what do you choose to do, who do you choose to be?

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📸 photo of the week:

I shared a pic of my current bookshelf on Twitter.

I'm trying to slowly accumulate old, obscure, meaningful objects I can place on my bookshelf or around my room. Fill my environment with beauty.

If you have a bookshelf you’re proud of, I’d love to see it! Just hit ‘Reply’ on this email.

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Much love to you and yours,

Tommy