Intelligence is the ability to understand many ideas. Wisdom is the ability to identify the few ideas worth understanding.
Mark Manson
The meaning of the quote
In 1997, Steve Jobs came back to Apple and found the company selling a dozen versions of the Macintosh. He asked his top managers which ones he should tell his friends to buy, and nobody could give him a simple answer.
Partway through one product meeting, he shouted for everyone to stop, walked to a whiteboard and drew a grid with 4 squares. He labeled the columns “Consumer” and “Pro” and the rows “Desktop” and “Portable.” Apple would build 4 great computers, one for each square, and drop almost everything else.
In the book Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson describes how Jobs cut about 70% of Apple’s products. The company lost $1.04 billion in the fiscal year he returned and made a $309 million profit the year after.
Apple was full of smart people. Jobs was the one willing to decide which 4 products deserved its attention.
Mark Manson wrote the quote in his newsletter with the subject line “If you’re so smart, why aren’t you happy?” The quote was his answer. Knowing many ideas doesn’t tell you which ones to live by.
Intelligence
Being smart means you can pick up almost any idea and follow it. You can read about 5 study methods, 3 diets and 10 ways to make money online in one weekend and understand all of them.
The trouble comes when it’s time to act, like the student who knows every note-taking system and spends exam week setting up a new app instead of studying. Each idea she understands pulls at her a little, so she keeps switching and never stays with one long enough to see it work.
Wisdom
In 1994, investor Charlie Munger gave a talk to business students at the University of Southern California about what he called worldly wisdom. He told them that around 80 or 90 big ideas from different fields would get them most of the way there. Then he narrowed it down further:
“And, of those, only a mere handful really carry very heavy freight.”
Wisdom is picking that handful out of everything you’ve learned and giving it most of your attention.
Action steps
All you need is a notebook and 10 minutes.
- Write down everything you’re trying to learn right now.
Books on your nightstand, courses you signed up for, podcasts in your queue and the skills you keep saying you’ll pick up. - Circle the 3 that would change what you do this month.
If an idea only sounds good, it doesn’t make the cut. - Park the rest.
Move them to a “later” list and give your 3 circled ideas your full attention for 30 days.
You’ll get more from 3 ideas you use than from 30 you only understand.
About the author
Before Mark Manson sold millions of books, he was a failed musician. He graduated from Boston University in 2007 and started a dating advice blog the following year.
His big break came from a single blog post. In 2015 he wrote “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck” and turned it into a book the next year.
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck spent 268 weeks in the New York Times top 10, and his books have now sold more than 20 million copies in over 65 languages.
A reviewer at The Sunday Times once compared his writing to a local drunk who had spent too long in a bookshop’s philosophy section. Manson took it as a compliment.
The Subtle Art makes the same argument as the quote, only about caring instead of ideas. You have a limited amount of care to give, so spend it on what matters most to you.
It’s the same cut Jobs made at that whiteboard in 1997.
Resources
- The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (Book)
- A Lesson on Elementary Worldly Wisdom (Article)
- Steve Jobs (Book)
- Essentialism (Book)
- Mark Manson (Wikipedia)
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