# Knowing these three things early can save you 10 years of struggle

**Published by:** [一公斤](https://paragraph.com/@0xbba0c59ba543683a2191efe85fb691cf387e4364/)
**Published on:** 2022-05-21
**URL:** https://paragraph.com/@0xbba0c59ba543683a2191efe85fb691cf387e4364/knowing-these-three-things-early-can-save-you-10-years-of-struggle

## Content

I know there is a topic called: why does the gap between students widen three or four years after graduation? A highly praised answer made many people feel the same: In fact, there was a big gap between them when they were studying, but the school covered up the gap. In the past 16 years from primary school to university, everyone has been studying. They are in the same class, taught by the same group of teachers, read the same textbooks and take the same tests. It seems that there is no difference, but in fact, there is a big gap. Learning this model makes us all look very close. But after graduating from college and really moving towards society, it is time for these students to show their differences. Among them, the biggest gap is people's thinking mode. Thinking determines cognition, and cognition determines how far you can go in the future. "Don't let bad habits ruin you" mentioned in the book: good thinking can make a person, while bad thinking can destroy a person. After entering the society, knowing the following three modes of thinking as soon as possible can make you struggle 10 years less than your peers.Professional, your core competitiveness Luo Zhenyu once put forward the concept of "life with USB flash disk": bring your own information, do not install the system, plug and unplug at any time, and cooperate freely. This way of life has turned all the unstable factors that people are not optimistic about into advantages. So many young people began to think that work is not seeking stability, but pursuing value. As long as they realize their own value, stability is not important. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. But there must be a premise: you must have goods in your stomach and be professional in at least one field. In today's society, the competition in all walks of life is extremely fierce, and the requirements for professionals are becoming higher and higher. However, many people are only satisfied with understanding some knowledge and mastering some skills in a general way. They can taste everything and seem to know everything on the surface. In fact, such people have long lost their core competitiveness because their working ability is mediocre and can easily be replaced by others. My cousin who works as HR in a foreign enterprise once told me one thing: In 2015, their company recruited two graduates majoring in network engineering through a job fair in a university. Students a and B started as network maintenance engineers. Classmate a knows a little about network maintenance, but he is not interested in studying it carefully, so that he has worked for two years, and he still hasn't learned all the network technology of the company. Later, he was transferred to the software R & D department and still maintained a superficial attitude towards professional knowledge. His working ability was not recognized by the Department boss and finally had to leave. Classmate B worked as a network maintenance engineer for half a year. After mastering some superficial technology, he proposed to the HR department to work as a programmer in the next department. Having just learned programming and worked as a programmer for half a year, he had no enthusiasm to continue his research. He once again proposed to the personnel that he wanted to transfer to the Sales Department of the company. This time, the personnel refused and he had to resign. Young people who are new to the workplace always have this mentality: As soon as you learn something, you think you know everything, but in fact you only know its appearance and don't know its reason. Any work has its mysteries. Only through in-depth understanding can you master its essence. Thoreau once said, "to judge a man's knowledge, it depends on the extent to which he takes the initiative to make things clear." Some people have a superficial habit of doing things, partly because they are not serious. Another part of the reason is that they think they have mastered all the relevant skills and mistakenly regard the shallow Kung Fu they have learned as excellent skills. Classmate a belongs to the former, while classmate B belongs to the latter. Vocational skills are more refined than more. It is much better to master a professional skill in a down-to-earth manner than to be familiar with a number of vocational skills. Because in this era, specialty is your most powerful core competitiveness.Reject linear thinking Linear thinking refers to the way of thinking in a one-way linear mode. Its track is single and it is an extremely rigid static thinking mode. In Zhihu, I once saw a respondent share his accident while studying abroad: He got out of the car in the middle of the night and checked the fuel tank. He thought it was dark and drove away. Because he didn't bring a flashlight and his mobile phone was in the cab, he didn't bother to get it. I just touched my pocket and took out the lighter used for cigarette lighting. So he lit a lighter to illuminate. With a loud noise, he lost consciousness. A kind driver passed by and took him to the hospital in time. When he woke up, he couldn't move. After the fire, his car burned down on the spot, and he was severely burned. Fortunately, his life was saved. Later, when he talked about the days that set him on fire, he still had lingering fears. "I wanted to use the light of the lighter to see if there was any oil left in the fuel tank. I didn't expect that the fire of the lighter could detonate the car." This is the disaster caused by typical linear thinking. Thinking only in a single direction will inevitably lead to poor thinking. Dealing with problems in this way is often fatal. In fact, for a long time, we have always been used to using linear thinking to look at the world. It simply divides the nature of things with the standard of "black or white", but ignores the existence of gray areas and denies other possibilities. The world is non-linear in nature. It is multi-dimensional, three-dimensional and changing. Therefore, when we face problems, we should not only think along one idea, but analyze problems at multiple levels and dimensions to comprehensively cultivate our divergent thinking.Shortsightedness, your greatest enemy Let's start with a simple multiple-choice question: The survey found that many people prefer to get 200 yuan today, but don't care about the 5-fold return in the distant three years. This phenomenon looks very strange on the surface, but it deeply reveals the misunderstanding of most people's thinking. Many people have this tendency: I prefer to choose smaller interests at present rather than waiting for larger benefits in the future. This short-sighted thinking of coveting immediate interests without considering long-term interests is called "hyperbolic discount". In the TV series Ode to joy, fan shengmei impressed me most. Her native family has delayed her life, but why can't she succeed in the workplace after working hard in Shanghai for many years? Later, in one episode, Andy's inner monologue impressed me instantly. "Andy finally understands why fan shengmei has been in Shanghai for so many years and can only sit in that position, because fan shengmei is an old oilseed in the office." Short sighted, the pattern is too small. Although he is familiar with human accidents, he has no sense of responsibility and can't afford to be a girder. When fan shengmei meets something in the workplace, her first thought is to protect herself. She only cares about her immediate interests and doesn't make long-term plans. This type of people think that today is more important than tomorrow, and today's interests are the most real and reliable. Researchers have conducted an experiment on 4-year-old children in the United States and Colombia: They gave each child a piece of marshmallow and told them that if anyone could resist eating the marshmallow for 15 minutes, he could get a second piece of candy. The reaction of children in the two countries is generally the same. Two thirds of the children ate the first candy as soon as they got it. The boy got only one third of the cotton candy to resist the temptation. Many years later, the researchers visited the children who had undergone the marshmallow experiment and found that those who could resist the temptation were generally more successful when they grew up. Some people often say that "you know a lot of truth, but you still can't live a good life". In fact, what you lack is the courage to cross the "hyperbolic discount". Knowing that only by "controlling your mouth and opening your legs" can you lose weight, but because it won't work immediately, some people put their hopes on the so-called miracle weight-loss pills on Taobao and look forward to immediate results; I know that only by "beating myself" can I grow up, but because it won't work immediately, some people are addicted to all kinds of "success learning" and expect to succeed without hard work People tend to overestimate short-term gains and underestimate long-term gains. Only by changing your short-sighted thinking mode can you go further in the future.Conclusion People in this world are born differently, no matter in terms of qualification, background or educational opportunities. And those excellent people, we often think they have extraordinary intelligence. But in fact, the biggest gap between people is not in IQ, but in thinking mode. Morrow once said: we are all prisoners of our own experience. So don't limit your life with old thinking. Adjust and establish new thinking patterns, and you will usher in a better yourself.

## Publication Information

- [一公斤](https://paragraph.com/@0xbba0c59ba543683a2191efe85fb691cf387e4364/): Publication homepage
- [All Posts](https://paragraph.com/@0xbba0c59ba543683a2191efe85fb691cf387e4364/): More posts from this publication
- [RSS Feed](https://api.paragraph.com/blogs/rss/@0xbba0c59ba543683a2191efe85fb691cf387e4364): Subscribe to updates