The toughest thing in life for a smart person to figure out is often what’s worth working hard at and what they truly want.
It seems as rare to find a person who has gone through the steps to decide if they truly want and value the outcome they’re working towards as it is to find a smart person who doesn’t apply themselves fully when they’re actually interested in, value, and want to accomplish or do something.
Intelligence is a blunt instrument and should be taught to be used with the same consideration and care as you would any other potentially dangerous tool or device.
I would argue it doesn't matter what you expend effort on as long as you're expending effort. IMO the only true rule in life is that you only value things you expend effort on. Beyond being able to afford the basic necessities it's all semantics. For example if efficiency interests you then working smarter could be your thing, but you'll still need to find more challenges to work on so that you're always expending effort. By all means, do this, but if your goal is to eliminate or reduce overall future effort you're fooling yourself if you think this will achieve some higher state of happiness.
The greater the effort the more rewarding it is, regardless of whether others would consider it rewarding or smart effort.
Once you internalize this it's basically the secret to life and you can throw out all of those self-improvement rags. Of course it's still a struggle in that you'll forget it constantly and have to correct course.
The toughest thing in life for a smart person to figure out is often what’s worth working hard at and what they truly want.
It seems as rare to find a person who has gone through the steps to decide if they truly want and value the outcome they’re working towards as it is to find a smart person who doesn’t apply themselves fully when they’re actually interested in, value, and want to accomplish or do something.
Intelligence is a blunt instrument and should be taught to be used with the same consideration and care as you would any other potentially dangerous tool or device.