Maximize Your Brain
He had all his tools out, leaning up against the house, his truck, pretty much everywhere.
I guess the guy was doing some kind of big renovation or something.
I saw this one tool that looked completely foreign. It was a combination of a couple of familiar tools, but as they were put together I couldn’t fathom what they were used for.
I couldn’t get my mind off that the rest of the day.
When you think of all the stuff you can do today, that you couldn’t do just a year or so ago, it’s actually pretty amazing.
Not just the things you can do, but the tools you can use. Humans use tools without even thinking about them. But pretty much any gadget that you can think of, any device that is used for any purpose is some kind of tool.
Most tools are simple in concept, but pretty complicated in design. Your car gets you from point A to point B, but if you had to explain every part in detail, most of us would come up pretty short.
This is kind of easy to understand, as all tools are really revisions of previous tools. Things that were added to give more functionality.
A car still gets us from point A to point B as its primary function, but the cars today are a kajillion times more complicated than the cars from the fifties.
And they tell us that within the next couple of years, we’ll have self driving cars in some U.S. cities.
But there’s one tool that is extremely complicated in function AND extremely complicated in design.
This tool is so complicated that it is continuously updating itself, year after year. Being able to do more things, learn more things, use more things.
This “tool,” of course is your brain. You. Your mind-body system that is capable of more.
No matter HOW MUCH you can do now, you can do more. No matter how much you know now, you can learn more. No matter how much you’ve already created, you can create more. (And if you come back and read that sentence ten years from now it’s still true.)
Remember the story of the two guys who had the tree chopping contest? They both started off chopping trees with their axes. One guy would stop every hour, for five minutes.
At first, this allowed his competition to get ahead. But after a few hours, the once-an-hour guy started to take the lead.
See, he stopped every hour not to rest, but to sharpen his axe. Keeping your tool in tip top shape is a sure way to blow away the competition.
Even if the competition is your present self vs. your future self.
How do you take care of your most valuable tool?