? I talked with my colleagues about reading this week, including "reading volume" and "topic selection" I introduced myself that although I read a lot, the content was miscellaneous and useless, which led to the present situation: there were a lot of noises in my head. The adjustment I've always wanted to make is to focus on "useful" books, and then my colleague asked an open question with no fixed answer: how to define practical and useless? I answered him without thinking at that time. From a professional point of view, useful books include method tool sets, business cases, workplace skills, organizational management methods, and public information of cooperative companies, such as Huawei's. Colleagues mentioned that he also specialized in financial reporting some time ago, analyzing the company from a financial point of view. Compared with analyzing the company from the product and service dimensions, the financial report can better reflect the company's operation from the capital dimension.
However, the above question is too speculative, and it has jumped out from time to time to torture me these days: What is useful? What is useless?
think
No conclusion may be the conclusion of this question, and personal answers may be thousands of people. I want to record my thoughts. If the currently useful information content refers to? Can you refer to the cited tool sets, methodologies, cases and techniques? So, the so-called useless content, or when there are not so many urgent things to deal with, the information I want to obtain has the following characteristics:
-Strange objective facts about the development/growth of a particular organization.
-Important and non-urgent information can lead to in-depth thinking, explore the development law of things and summarize the abstract essence.
-A collection of philosophical and religious thoughts filtered by time.
In fact, after work, most of my time and energy are consumed unconsciously, including messy and complicated information flow, fragmented chat and communication, and fragmented reading. In the form of words, audio and video, my brain seems to be always busy, but it seems to be empty, without any knowledge increment. Well, this is a problem that I need to solve.
What should we do? Let's deal with this first: First, it is easier to "do nothing" by reducing the input of noise; The second is to increase structured output, starting with text and audio (the topic revolves around your professional goals and hobbies). Of course, "what to do" is not so easy to achieve.
Interesting history
1933, the Nazi government raided Einstein's apartment in Berlin and offered a reward? 10? Wanmark wants this Jew. At that time, Einstein was in Princeton, USA, and the Berlin Institute could not go back. At this time, flexner, the first president of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, immediately invited Einstein to work in the Institute. Einstein made two demands. First, my self-care ability is relatively poor. Please allow me to bring an assistant. Second, give me an annual salary of $3,000, and I will be satisfied. Flexner said that the first one is fine, and the second one is absolutely not. Einstein quickly said that if the cost of living in Princeton is lower, I can ask for lower. Flexner said, I don't agree. It's not that you want too much, but too little. If I give you an annual salary of $3,000, then the whole world will think that I am abusing Einstein. As a result, Einstein's annual salary at Princeton is set at? 16, 000? Dollars. Einstein spent the rest of his life at Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies? 20? For many years, I think with coffee every day, chat with people, have no worries about food and clothing, and travel around the universe with my thoughts. Many famous people have taught in Princeton Institute of Advanced Studies, such as China's Vonner, Iman, Godel, Hamor, and China's mathematician and Hua. Scientists here are paid. They don't need to attend classes or publish papers. They just talk to people everywhere with coffee every day.
So, what kind of existence is the Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies? In New Jersey, USA, there are two brothers and sisters, Louis Babbage, who started a small commodity business from scratch. 19 12 years, their small business developed into a department store, and the 14 floor occupied the whole block. Arrive? 1929? In 2006, just six weeks before the Great Depression in the United States, they sold their assets to Macy's at a high price of $25 million, which perfectly escaped the Great Depression. This year, they decided to return their wealth to New Jersey people.
At first, their idea was to set up a medical school, so they consulted flexner. Flexner was a famous physician at that time, but flexner said it was not suitable to co-organize medical schools here, because without the support of big hospitals and medical universities, it was better to set up research institutes for pure theoretical research. As businessmen, brother and sister agreed. As a result, the Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies was established, which has nothing to do with Princeton University. It is still the top research institution in the United States. Princeton College has no administrative committee and no routine work. Many people blame flexner, the president, and think that the scientists he hired with huge sums of money do nothing and do useless things every day. In the face of doubt, flexner said that his fellow countryman Gauss was born in Prussia before Einstein was born/the 0/00th anniversary of KLOC-. Gauss invented non-Euclidean geometry, which is the most obscure mathematical research in the whole19th century. 1/ 4? In the 20th century, relevant research was not published at that time, because people thought they were useless. But today, the whole world knows that without Gauss's research in G? ttingen, the theory of relativity and its rich practical value will all go up in smoke. At Princeton, flexner said, what I hope Mr Einstein can do is to turn coffee into mathematics, and prove that these theorems will expand the boundary of human cognition and promote the liberation of soul and spirit from generation to generation.
Flexner used to communicate with Eastman. Hysmans is recognized as the father of photography in the world and the founder of Kodak Company. At that time, he was preparing to invest his life savings in American higher education to promote the development of useful disciplines. Laixner asked Hysmans: Sir, who do you think is the most useful scientist today? Hysmans said Marconi. In Eastman's view, the wireless communication invented by Marconi fundamentally changed the way of human work and promoted the development of the whole human civilization. Is that why Marconi is here? 1909? In 2006, he won the Nobel Prize in Physics. Unexpectedly, flexner said: Dear Mr. Hysmans, in my opinion, no matter what radio and broadcasting bring to human life, Marconi's contribution is almost negligible. Why did flexner say that? In flexner's view, firstly, Marconi's appearance is inevitable; Third, a giant has quietly paved all the steps for the invention of radio, just waiting for someone to reach the top. This man is Professor Clark Maxwell. It was Maxwell's thorough calculation of electromagnetic field that produced those abstract equations and made Marconi's work possible. Maxwell never cared whether his research was useful, never set any practical goals, and never invented anything specific. However, his useless theoretical work, once used by clever technicians, can immediately create a brand-new product.
1939, Flex wrote a famous article "Utilization of Useless Knowledge". He wrote: "Today, practicality is the criterion for us to judge the existence value of a university, a research institution or any scientific research. But in my opinion, the existence of any organization does not need any explicit or implicit practical judgment. As long as the souls of several generations are liberated, this system is enough to be affirmed. No matter whether the graduates can make so-called beneficial contributions to mankind, a poem, a painting, a symphony, a mathematical axiom and a brand-new scientific discovery, these achievements are the significance of the existence of universities, colleges and research institutions. Because of this, I strongly appeal to everyone not to care too much about the concept of practicality. Some ideas may waste money, but what is far more important than money is that the shackles that imprison human thoughts are broken and the ideological exploration is free.
Let's remember the following passage of Flaksman:
(The original text was originally published in the official WeChat account "Whispering")