Allow me to delve into some crass nomenclature to describe my teenage years:

I was an idiot.

My saving graces were strict parents, smart friends and a desire to learn. I’m thankful they softened the blow for all the mistakes I’ve made and continue to suffer the repercussions from.

One advantage I thought I had actually worked against me as I got older—school was easy.

I could get by (well) with little studying and limited effort as I was quick to grasp ideas and produce what the teacher wanted. Inevitably, this led to bad habits and a psychological roadblock to confront anything challenging; a fixed mindset would be the most pedagogical term.

However, there was still a hunger to learn and a desperate need to be less of an idiot. I’ll defer to my wife whether I’ve made any significant progress on the latter, but the learning has been satiated with developing another skill: learning how to think.

Learning how to think isn’t so much about the process of learning (there’s endless debates on that subject), but of actually doing the hard work of thinking. Not just looking for prepackaged answers that simply need repeating.

In our current environment of automated systems and low friction barriers to accessing information, we are being lulled into a false sense of our own thoughts. What we need is more time to stop, be humble and do the work of thinking on our own.

It’s a skill worth learning.