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>In grade school I nearly failed a semester because I read books all day. It was obsessive. I didn't do my school work but knew all kinds of random facts. This

>In grade school I nearly failed a semester because I read books all day. It was obsessive. I didn't do my school work but knew all kinds of random facts. This is a very familiar story. Even today it's still an issue. I have missed the gym, or been late to a social obligation hundreds of times due to getting stuck reading something. While the behavior does have negative impacts, I generally view it as a positive thing. I know a little about a lot, and I can generally have an engaging conversation with anyone, about the things they want to talk about. I think knowing a little about a lot also helps me in the periphery of the things I do go deep into. For example, I've read hundreds of articles on Hacker News about cyber security and have read countless comments by cynical devs explaining that companies don't take security seriously because it doesn't create revenue. Today as a non-technical founder, the security posture of my organization is 10x better than my peers (including technical founders) at similar sized (and even bigger!) orgs. You spoke specifically about the negative impacts - do you see any positive impacts?

mythrwy 5y ago
Yep there are a lot of positive impacts. Like you, I feel I know a little about a lot of things. By the time I was in maybe 6'th grade I suspect I had better knowledge of world history, different cultures, ecology and a whole lot other topics then most of my teachers. At least at a superficial level. Even though a lot of books I was reading were fiction I knew a lot about the world. So (as you say) a lot of times when I need to know something I know where to look or have a baseline to start from. Also I think I understand how things fit together holistically better then average. And my research skills are pretty good, separating the wheat from the chaff and rapidly getting to the meat of a topic takes a lot less time then others I've noticed. But, it hasn't made me rich lol. Perhaps because I have too many interests and they aren't always the most immediately useful. And there have been other problems.

mythrwy 5y ago

Yep there are a lot of positive impacts. Like you, I feel I know a little about a lot of things. By the time I was in maybe 6'th grade I suspect I had better knowledge of world history, different cultures, ecology and a whole lot other topics then most of my teachers. At least at a superficial level. Even though a lot of books I was reading were fiction I knew a lot about the world. So (as you say) a lot of times when I need to know something I know where to look or have a baseline to start from. Also I think I understand how things fit together holistically better then average. And my research skills are pretty good, separating the wheat from the chaff and rapidly getting to the meat of a topic takes a lot less time then others I've noticed. But, it hasn't made me rich lol. Perhaps because I have too many interests and they aren't always the most immediately useful. And there have been other problems.