Comparing top tier anything to normal people is apples to oranges. I am a knowledge worker, but I don't often take notes in meetings, because the purpose of me

Comparing top tier anything to normal people is apples to oranges. I am a knowledge worker, but I don't often take notes in meetings, because the purpose of meetings to to get agreement, not to forge new knowledge. Sure there are minutes and actions. But a meeting notes is not a "kata" that I practice to be better at my job. I work in a research org at a FAANG, which supposedly puts me in the "top tier". I do not have a doctorate, or a masters. The thing that makes me "good" is that I am able to communicate how to do x with y, and direct people to use z with building blocks omega and theta. the thing I practice every day is working out how to translate an infrastructure problem to a researcher who couldn't give a shit and just wants put what they have running locally on the GPU farm, but faster. That is my kata, that is what I strive to be better at. I write to explain, not remember. that's just a nice side effect. Is that writing perfect prose? fuck no, but its a fucksite better than most of my peers. It has to be because I'm a shit engineer otherwise. > People seem to forget most of what they read Yes, and musicians forget music. Sure they have a repertoire of core pieces that they can pull out, but they are often learning one off pieces, or semi-sight reading stuff (session musicians are fucking ace by the way. Some are able to read music like a news reader does an autocue.) That core repertoire is kept alive because they need to play it often. For me, my professional repertoire is threading, message passing, and large scale dataflow. But my sight reading is computer vision shit. In the same way a phd student will master and expand a tiny part of human knowledge, a musician will tend to specialise in a few composers, styles or periods. > confusing a sense of enjoyment with any sort of durable understanding Again, thats not what a knowledge worker does. Learning for fun is not the same as core knowledge/skill required for someone to perform a job. Thats someone pissing about and learning new things for enjoyment, and they should fucking do it regardless of the snobbery from people who want "completeness" One of the amusing things about this whole argument is that the writer must have been able to write, spell and read well from a young age. The ancient greeks would have been very suspicious of that kind of working, because they thought that writing was the death of memory, deliberation and debate. Socrates would have particularly pissed off with the assertions on memory. I couldn't write meaningfully until I learnt to touch type. So for me, everything was memory. I work differently to most people, so I'm not arrogant enough to produce sources and say that I have the best way to be a knowledge worker. I don't but it works for me. The author would do well to remember that untested assertions are not science. (yes, even if you cite papers.)