Don't Be Worried About Forgetting What You Read

Photo: Vanity Fair

Originally published December 2020.

Are you worried about forgetting the things you read?

Don’t be.

As a human being, your power doesn’t come from your ability to memorize things & then spit them back out, word-for-word…

Your power comes from your creativity.

And part of unleashing your creative power is by “connecting” different ideas in your head.

In the same way that a bodybuilder combines different workouts over time to create a strong body…

• Every book you read…

• YouTube video you watch…

• Deep conversation you have…

...this all can lead to a strong mind that is able to connect different ideas in new ways.

It’s not about remembering all of the little details…

It’s about understanding how everything in the universe relates to each other.

You get to compare your reality with the reality of others.

Find out what is the same… what is different… what two ideas can be combined to create something new and fresh.

That’s why our physical brain looks like a giant network… where the “nodes” of the network make unique connections with each other.

If life was about memorizing things… our brain would look more like one big, long grocery list…

But it doesn’t.

So, there's not a big need to memorize things.

Follow your curiosity…

Allow your mind the freedom & fun of doing what it does best…

And unleash your creative power as a human.