What was your first kiss like? We may not always love it, but everyone has an answer. Yet at the same time, we often don’t remember our last kiss.
After reading the Most Human Human, I realized this phenomenon occurs because my first kiss was totally new, so I learned a ton from it and formed a memory. However, my last time kissing my wife was similar to thousands before it. Because of this, I don’t remember as many details.
In Most Human Human, the author Brian Christian dives into information theory by Claude Shannon, which broadly says how surprising something is determines how much learning there is from it. This paired one of my favorite ever articles from Morgan Housel on why time slowed during COVID taught me two simple lessons:
- We learn from surprisal
- New memories are formed by surprise
Knowing this, I see it everywhere:
- Why do you always learn the most on the first day of the job? So much so that there’s the common expression…drinking from a firehose
- Why can I describe the first time I ate lobster, but not what I had for lunch two days ago?
- Why do I remember my trip to London two years ago, but not visiting home last month?
And my new two rules for daily life are:
- Put myself in uncomfortable or uncertain situations
- As Christian says “we gain the most insight when we take it from a friend, colleague, or mentor of whose reaction we’re least certain”
- If I already know what will happen, I’m not pushing myself and am not growing
- I learn from traveling to new places, new cultures, and even just running on a different route than I normally do on a daily basis
- Look for what’s new in the common
- Paying even more attention to details makes something stand out
- When I truly focus I can see that this tomato soup has extra basil than the last. Not only does that stand out, but it also helps me savor experiences more