I’ve been updating my column for six months on Geek Hour, and I just finished updating it at the end of the year. This is the end of the column, a summary of my thoughts, and I share it here.

The theme of this column is about growth, and the essence of growth is two words: knowing and doing — beginning with knowing and finally doing.

know

Knowledge, from reading; When you decide to learn something, the natural place to start is reading. To learn from reading is either to acquire knowledge directly, or to find references and inspirations worthy of reference from the learning experiences or experiences of others.

I graduated from Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou with a master’s degree. What has always impressed me is the school motto of the same year. It was written by Dr. Sun Yat-sen at the founding ceremony of Guangdong University on November 11, 1924:

Learn to interrogate carefully think clearly and practice earnestly

The text is from the Confucian classic “The Doctrine of the Mean” : “To learn, to interrogate, to think carefully, to distinguish clearly and to practice earnestly”, but Sun Yat-sen gave it a new-age meaning.

“Learned” understandable, beside the school motto card nearby is the former residence of Chen yinque, Chen yinque’s modern historians, researchers on classical Chinese literature, linguists, academician of academia sinica, the republic of China one of the four big tutor of tsinghua university academy of China (the other three people as liang qichao, wang guowei, yuanren chao), familiar with more than 20 languages, is a learned man.

Compared with Dr. Sun Yat-sen’s time more than 90 years ago, today is the age of information explosion and overload, knowledge and learning are also submerged in these explosion of information, who can easily be called erudite, we can only say that in the flood of information, keep learning forever. If you can keep learning, then today you are slightly more knowledgeable than you were yesterday, and this year you are more knowledgeable than you were last year.

Because of information overload, we take in information by reading a lot of different kinds, so it’s important to interrogate, deliberate, and discern the information. “Asking, thinking and distinguishing” is to screen, analyze and process information, to remove the dregs and get the essence. After noise reduction, screening and analysis, the information is combined with our own existing knowledge and experience to form our own independent thinking and views, and these independent thinking and views can be used to guide our actions, that is, “earnest action”.

Knowing comes before doing. Know, just line method; Yes, is the purpose of knowledge.

line

During my study in CUHK, I went to the laboratory in the morning and came back in the evening, more or less passing by the school logo. More than a decade later, if you look back on the knowledge and skills acquired in school, you will either be out of date or have forgotten all of them. Ultimately, what stayed in my heart was the very clear cross sermon on the school motto board, which has been guiding my future learning and growth.

The first 8 words and 4 words make up 80% of the text, but I think the time and energy spent on them should be the exact opposite: 20% of the time and energy spent on studying how to know better, and 80% of the time and energy spent on continuing to do. Wrong proportion, it is likely to end up with little achievement, harvest.

But “going straight” is often the most time consuming phase, and if you get it wrong, a lot of effort can be wasted. Therefore, the “learning, asking, thinking and discerning” before “going” is very important. They are the compass that constantly corrects the direction before going or even during the journey.

My column can offer you only some of my experience, experience and thinking, for your reference on the road. Your reading will make you a little more knowledgeable, but this is only the first step of information transmission and reception, without the following “ask, think, argue, act”, how much of a meaning to you? So, you’ll have to do the rest on your own.

The paper come zhongjue shallow, and must know this to practice.

On the road of “walking”, we may start by referring to the path of our predecessors. Although we often want to follow our own path, in fact, most of us have been following the path of our predecessors all our lives. Write this, think of a few years ago about my own real “road” sentiment.

A few years ago, I got my driver’s license and bought a car. From Chengdu, it passed the grasslands where the Red Army’s Long March had trodden, bypassed qinghai Lake, and followed the ancient Silk Road route to Dunhuang. The Silk Road went out from Dunhuang, divided into two, north through Yumen pass, south out of Yangguan, there suddenly a sense of poetry and distance.

But no matter how freely we drive, we’re just following in the footsteps of others. In dunhuang grottoes to see Zhang Daqian’s handwriting, only to learn that the war masters also used to copy ancient murals here, taking the road of predecessors.

Drove the car on the road, both sides is desert, occasionally saw in front have a car, more than that to move forward, into the gobi desert, on both sides of the road can’t see the head, looked at under never see other people and cars, walk on the road feel some flustered, there has been some panic just walked in the way of our predecessors, it out of the predecessors of the road and this is what kind of mood?

On the way back, into the shu after the national road one to two lanes, the car up after all can only follow, the big car in the road slowly block the road, the car will borrow the road overtaking. The lane itself is a certain danger, the large car is ok, if the front is a small car, itself is not slow, is it better to follow the balance between safety and speed? I tried to follow the car without passing it, but it didn’t take long to lose track.

When you decide to follow the car to give up the heart of transcendence, stability is safer, but the pace is in the hands of the car in front, will only be left far behind. Driving on the road is so ok, but the road of life is not to follow others, have a heart beyond, according to their own pace has been going, you will eventually slowly out of a road of their own.

This road, is it difficult to walk? Difficult, feeling can not go down, might as well read Li Bai’s poem.

On the difficult! On the difficult! Many different roads, now where?

Therefore, in recent years, I always read tang poetry from time to time.

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Thank you all the way to read here, I hope this is you again “know” starting point, the back to see your “line”. Growth is nothing more than an iterative cycle from “knowing” to “doing”.

Finally, at the beginning of the New Year, I wish you all the best.

Write some words, draw some pictures, record the moment of growth. Wechat public account “instant”, since we met, it is better to go together.