dark side of intellectual curiosity

Happy Monday!

I got back from my 3-week safari across Uganda and Tanzania late last week.

Readjusting to my daily life in downtown Toronto has felt pretty strange.

It feels a bit like putting on an old suit you haven’t worn in ages…

Tight in some places, loose in others.

Nevertheless, I’ve always found revisiting my life and business with fresh eyes to be a profitable exercise.

And this time was no different.

For instance:

This trip was my first time sleeping with earplugs.

Now, I’m a big white noise guy…

And I sleep with an eye mask as well…

Yet as a side sleeper, ear plugs never worked for me.

They’d always end up jamming into my ear canal or falling out.

However:

Knowing there’d likely be a lot of ambient noise in some of these tented lodges…

(given that zebras, antelope, warthogs, baboons, wildebeest, and other animals liked to roam the grounds at night)

And that I wouldn’t be able to lug my big white noise machine with me on some of these tiny little bush planes..

I figured it was time to give earplugs another shot.

Thankfully, I stumbled across some killer ones in a recent edition of Tim Ferriss’s newsletter.

They’re just like putty, basically…

So you can fit them to your exact ear shape without having them stick out.

And they worked like a charm.

Which was a huge relief, given how frenetic and taxing the trip was at times.

Anyhow, why am I telling you this?

To provide a gentle reminder (slash note to self) that removing inputs can often lead to better outputs.

As I drop back into my business and the many different information streams I’ve been exploring this year…

I’m kind of amazed I didn’t have a mental breakdown at some point lol

It all seems a bit schizophrenic to me now.

Obviously AI is a big part of this.

But I think it’s also a structural defect that comes with excess intellectual curiosity.

Your superpower is also your super weakness.

Therefore, one of my main goals over the next few weeks is to re-examine everything I’m taking in with an eye to cutting some things out…

Narrowing the aperture of my focus to strengthen the power of the beam.

If you’ve also been in a season of expansion where you’re consuming more, more, more…

I’d encourage you to reflect on what’s essential vs what isn’t.

Chances are, there’s some mental hedge trimming to be done.

That’s all for today, though :)

Jim Hamilton

P.S:

Here’s another one of my favorite pics from the trip: