Hey all,
About a week ago, I got this comment on my YouTube channel (on a video about managing all your interests):
Why does everyone learn things? What motivates you? Why do anything if we are just gonna live so many years?
To be clear, I don’t think this is a bad question! As some wrestler supposedly once said, the unexamined life is not worth living, and I don’t think it’s a bad idea to occasionally ask yourself whether you’re wasting your time drawing a hundred boxes a day than wandering through parks or trying to eat every style of sugary treat in the world or whatever. But I love learning things, and I’ll probably try to continue learning things until the year/month/day I drop dead, and so this week I thought I’d try to explain why. Short answer first, longer answers afterwards.
Short answer: Because it’s fun.
Longer answer: Because it makes life much more interesting, interconnected, and…fun. Discounting the skills you might learn because they’ll have an immediate, tangible benefit to your life — talking, writing, drawing, etc — every new thing I learn makes me feel just a little bit more connected to everyone else on this big ball of rock and water hurtling through endless space.
Learning to grapple, for instance, didn’t just give me a load of ways to throw another person on the floor or squeeze their carotid arteries until they ask me to stop — it’s taught me a lot about perseverance, my own limitations, and what it takes to be really good at something. Learning about art has given me new ways to look at the world, and learning about maths makes me feel connected to the language of the universe. Learning to read music, and then about music theory, and then about the way Pythagoras realised that mathematical ratios are at the heart of harmonics, gave me new ways to think about and appreciate music (and I still find it incredible that, about a thousand years after it was invented, nobody’s come up with a more efficient way of conveying all the information you need to play a piece of music than a load of dots on some lines). Learning about the principles behind engineering and architecture is fascinating. Learning about evolution and the human is amazing. It doesn’t have to be for anything. It’s just fun.
Existential answer: You can skip this one if you want, but…
We’re all going to die. That’s pretty much unarguable. In a hundred years, probably nobody will remember you. In ten billion years, probably nobody will remember anything about anyone. So why not do the things you enjoy, and live the way you want to? I like learning: I’m going to keep on learning, without the expectation that it’ll always lead to something. I’ll keep on sharing it, because I like doing that too.
I probably won’t draw any more boxes, though. That got really boring, really fast.
Have a great weekend!
Joel x
Stuff I’ve done
🎥 Video - How I Remember (Almost) Everything I Read
I’m not going to say that I remember everything I read, because that would be crazy: lots of it isn’t that helpful or interesting. But over the last few years, I’ve made a serious effort to retain and use the most insightful and helpful stuff out of the 50-80ish books I average a year. Here’s how!
Stuff I like
📖 Book - Think Like An Artist - Will Gompertz
Yes, I’m reading another book by Will Gompertz. This one’s a bit less in-depth than his previous ones (What Are You Looking At? is maybe the only introduction to modern art you need), but it’s a zippy little tour through the works of artists both well-known and unknown, and a great nudge towards different ways of unlocking new ways to be creative.
🎶 Hype Music - Sunset Runway / Critical Velocity OST
Who’d have thought that a 2004 GTA knockoff would have one of the most upbeat, jazzy intro tunes you’ve ever heard anywhere? This feels like it should be scoring a heist movie, and in fact the link above goes out to a whole playlist called Video Game Crime Jazz, pretty much all of which is great. Get on it, and go steal a big diamond (don’t actually do this).
🎥 Film - Rebel Ridge, Netflix
The editor of Empire magazine describes this film as ‘elevated Jack Reacher’, and that’s exactly how it feels: it’s got exactly the same large-competent-man-wanders-into-minefield-of-corruption vibes as the first season of the Prime show, but improves on the formula by plucking a civil forfeiture plot straight from the headlines and having a hero who’s even easier to root for. I’ve loved director Jeremy Saulnier since Blue Ruin, and I hope this film means a lot more of him being able to do whatever he wants (and star Aaron Pierre getting a tonne more work).
🧐 Quote of the week
“Need alone is not enough to set power free. There must be knowledge.”
From A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin (I’m reading it to my 7 year-old)
Like this newsletter?
Please forward it to someone else! Also, if you’ve got a book or an article you think I should read, or something you think I should watch or try, please send it my way.
And if you haven’t already, please check out my YouTube channel, where I deep-dive into stuff like productivity, lifelong learning, piano and Brazilian jiu-jitsu.
URSULA LE GUIN! LETS GOOOOOOO
Also:
“go steal a big diamond (don’t actually do this)”
Don’t tell me how to live, man