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No One Can Teach You Anything
An Insidious Proxy
Hello, my name is Felix and I am an addict.
I apologise for the dramatic entrance (not really), but I’m not talking about substance abuse. I’m not an alcoholic, I never smoked a cigarette in my life, and I don’t gamble either. My addiction is more subtle and far from uncommon.
I am addicted to consuming information.
I do not mean to belittle a disease like alcoholism that destroys not just individual lives but entire families. My issue clearly isn’t as bad.
However, information addiction kept me stuck for most of my adult life. It’s difficult to spot because it disguises itself as learning and progress—but consuming information is not the same as learning.
I consume all kinds of entertainment, highbrow, lowbrow, fiction, non-fiction, you name it. As a kid, I loved watching cartoons and playing video games. As I grew older, I started to read more and more broadly and never stopped.
In my mid 20s, I got into self-help books: Stoicism, Eastern philosophy, psychology, storytelling and communication, nutrition and physical training. Of course, the books got complemented by a never-ending stream of YouTube videos and podcasts.
I was driven by a desire to learn and change—or so I thought. I wanted to solve my own problems, grow, and get better (whatever that means).
I resolved some issues along the way. Self-study and experimentation helped me figure out where my nutrition went wrong. Serious problems disappeared that had plagued me for years. I had found the right information and made good use of it.
But change came slowly and not across the board. I was still stuck in a job that created an overwhelming sense of dissatisfaction—without a path to a brighter future.
However, it wasn’t the information’s fault. Don’t get me wrong, there is a lot of stupid, useless, negative stuff out there, but some of it is pretty good—at least potentially. The problem was a gap in my understanding.
Instead of focusing on actual change and the core driver behind it, I focused on an insidious proxy: consuming information. For most of my life, I regarded consuming information as learning. This mistaken belief allowed me to stay stuck in the cosy comfort zone of complacency.
What It Means to Learn
In Indian philosophy, there are two words for knowledge that capture two distinctly different meanings: Vidya and Jnana.
Vidya can be more accurately translated with information, while Jnana means understanding or wisdom.
Information is objective and transmissible. Think books, podcasts, videos, lectures, and so on. It’s something I can capture and hand to you. But whatever I give you couldn’t possibly make you understand its content because consuming information alone isn’t enough for gaining knowledge.
Understanding is subjective and fundamentally non-transmissible. It’s the difference between a love song and falling in love. No amount of description could ever convey how it feels to love another person. Understanding is based in personal experience.
All knowledge, in the sense of Jnana, comes from within. It’s the ‘aha’ moment, the feeling of a lightbulb going off. You don’t simply understand an idea better by reading about it more often. The knowledge isn’t actually on the page. If the understanding could be found there, all you had to do was read it once, or twice, or thrice.
True understanding is something inside our mind that is found or recalled. Outside information may trigger pre-existing unconscious knowledge and bring it to the surface, but this depends more on the person and less so on the information itself.
Taking in information doesn’t lead to learning something new, for the following stricter definition of learning: You learned something when your response to a certain stimulus has changed.
This definition is action-based, it doesn’t take the passive consumption of information into account—which doesn’t mean it cannot be beneficial. But consuming information alone does not lead to learning because you can read a book on forming habits without changing a single habit.
When I got typed by Shan and Dave from Objective Personality in 2020, I received the information that my last animal was blast. This doesn’t mean I actually understood what that meant. It definitely didn’t lead to overnight change.
I got in theory that I was leaving a void when it came to communicating and producing, but that didn’t mean I suddenly started talking and cranking out projects the next day.
I know now that I couldn’t even properly see the blast last, although someone who knew what they’re talking about told me unambiguously that it was there. I didn’t understand yet because there was still something missing.
More Experience
Change, the moment the lightbulb goes off, can come in an instant. But arriving at that instant takes time.
A friend of mine had been struggling to quit smoking for years. Of course, she knew it wasn’t good for her, she had all the information. But whenever she tried to quit, she got dragged back in a few months later—until she got pregnant with her first child.
The moment she learned about the pregnancy, change happened in an instant. She simply quit.
The experience of carrying a child and being responsible for its health made her understand she had to. It may have looked like discipline to a bystander, but it wasn’t about that at all. It was understanding.
Understanding is the root of change. People who change do so because they understand that they must.
Understanding removes the need for willpower. Once you truly understand that you should do a certain thing, doing it becomes your natural impulse, no effort or willpower required. You cannot not do it any more. What may look like discipline begins with understanding.
If you want to change, purely looking for more information is a waste of time. Unless you combine new information with gaining personal experience to discover understanding. You’re looking for change on the inside.
How do you know that change has taken place? Once you begin to act differently on the outside. Only this is true learning. Inner change begets outer change.
Subjective understanding is closer to the truth than objective information.
No amount of information can give you the feeling of carrying a child. You cannot find knowledge in others, not in books, not in blogs. You can only find it within your own experience. So that’s what you must pay attention to.
Paying Attention
While acting differently is effortless once you understand, gaining the experience you need is hard. So hard. It takes time and that’s okay—and if you’re not ready, you’re not ready.
When I say change doesn’t require discipline, I don’t mean to say it isn’t painful. I definitely don’t mean to say it’s easy.
Experiences that trigger new understanding are excruciating because they require you to recognise a contradiction within your current beliefs. They require you to let go of a part of yourself, a part that was meant to keep you safe within the comfort of the familiar.
If you’re looking for change, you must look for understanding. And if you’re looking for understanding, you must look within your own experience.
It’s our default attitude to avoid understanding the mistakes we’re making. We seek distractions to avoid the pain that comes with introspection and contemplation. In the short-term, it’s easier to cope.
But understanding involves awareness and paying attention to the things that matter.
I started curbing my information addiction after I began journaling. Trying to put my thoughts into words, forced me to face the inadequacy of my own understanding. This realisation was tremendously painful, but I couldn't escape it. It was on the page right in front of me.
I felt disgust. Disgust for all the time I wasted. I wasted time because I wanted to “learn” faster—in other words, rushing on to the next book. I rarely stayed with a fresh idea or concept long enough to create experiences that would trigger understanding within. If you want to learn fast, go slow.
The act of journaling created the experience I needed to realise the void I was leaving. Only then did I notice and understand the pain of being blast last—two years after getting typed. I could finally see the root of my stuckness.
The experience was painful, but my behaviour has changed since then. I began putting myself out there and creating regularly. You're reading the results right now.
This led to more subjective satisfaction and new objective opportunities. It helped me get my current job and find mentorship.
I also found a deeper sense of freedom.
More information is not the answer. Good things wait for you on the other side of introspection, understanding, and change.