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Integrating new knowledge leaves me feeling drained yet fulfilled. It’s a state where I have no excess energy or willpower except to enjoy rest. It’s like my neurons are fried and have to rest. Productivity without learning is the only maintainable kind.

That’s why we consider the hardworking company man to be the opposite of the professor. Productivity is opposed to learning because it drains away efficiency. It’s friction that stops the flywheel.

If you can’t focus for long periods of time, you lean towards following your curiosity and learning. If you can, towards efficient thinking.

The “perfect” student ironically isn’t learning very much because they’ve shut down their curiosity and distilled the test into a formula with complex steps to follow which they brute force.

The lifelong learners ironically thinks of productivity as learning even though in the business world there is no desire to learn except to manage risk. The learners never fit in because their attempts to be productive look like waste.