Knowledge vs Execution

Hey friends,

Here’s a fun short story for y’all.

A determined book salesman once told a farmer that ‘a set of books on scientific agriculture’ would teach him to farm better.  To which the farmer replied: ‘Hell, son, I don’t farm half as good as I know how.’

I think about this whenever I’m about to fall into the trap of thinking I need more knowledge, when usually I just need better execution.

Have a great week!

Ali

This week on Not Overthinking

Not Overthinking is the weekly podcast hosted by me and my brother. If you enjoy these emails, you’ll hopefully like that too. You can listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Castro (my favourite podcast app) or any other podcast app – just search for ‘Not Overthinking’.

External appearances vs internal experiences | Not Overthinking

In this episode we talk about the external appearances of different lifestyles and how they differ from the internal experience of living them. We also dig into Ali’s mindset when it comes to YouTube and business, and whether it’s best to always be thinking about creating economic value. Honestly, we talk about quite a few different things in this episode without much of an overarching theme. Oh well!

My Favourite Things this week

1 – Audiobook – This morning, on the drive to work for a weekend obsetrics on-call shift, I finished listening (on Audible of course) to The Dragon Reborn, the third book in the incredible Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan. I wouldn’t recommend the series if you haven’t had much experience with fantasy as it starts off a bit slow (Mistborn is a better gateway drug).

2 – Article – I really enjoyed Paul Graham’s latest piece on The Lesson to Unlearn. It’s definitely worth a read if you’re a student or recent graduate, and find yourself in the seemingly endless cycle of testing and exams.

3 – Blog post – Seth Godin’s daily blog strikes again with a fantastic, short-and-sweet reminder about water towers. In fact, because I know almost no one clicks these links, I’ve copied and pasted it below for your convenience.

On the top of many apartment buildings (and on a hill in many towns) you’ll find a water tower, a large wooden or metal container holding tons of water.

Why bother?

It turns out that a pump that slowly and consistently pumps water uphill is way more efficient than the high-powered, high-capacity pump you’d need to meet spikes in demand. By using gravity to assist during times of heavy load, the consistent and more efficient pump gets the job done by planning ahead.

We all need a water tower somewhere in our work.

Kindle Highlight of the Week

Do you see it now? In a word, happiness is the feeling of contribution. That is the definition of happiness.

From The Courage to be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi & Fumitake Koga. Resurfaced with Readwise.

This week’s video