Training for the jump

Throughout my life, I have always thought that big opportunities are all around us. The obvious problem is that we don't see them coming and almost all the time only notice them once they have past. Why do we constantly miss things that seem so obvious after they are already taken advantage of? Two reasons. We do not question enough of what we see, the motivations behind how something is done, or why it isn't done another way. But also, we cannot see what we don't understand. The only way to understand an opportunity that is almost certainly not the norm, is by engaging your mind with constant new ideas, testing them against one another, and then seeing which makes the most sense. How are you supposed to see something different if you are not questioning why things are done the same?

That is why I have always tried to learn as much as possible, at all times. Every time I have an article that I don't want to read because I am lazy, I think about how maybe this is the article that will make the connection I need to understand something, and then act, in the future. Whether it is seeing what's missing, or noticing a flaw that is making something inefficient. We have to incessantly be absorbing new things, or we will just get stuck in the static of current ideas.

Like someone smarter than me said, "If you challenge the conventional wisdom, you will find ways to do things much better than they are currently done."