It sounds like I’m talking about the surface dwellers and we’re all the people who live underground. Well, hey there. Welcome back.



The Discomfort of Partial Knowledge



You may have figured out by now that I like to know things and I like to learn things. And I’ve probably figured out by now that you’re the same. You also like to know things and you like to learn things. And I’m honored that this is one of your sources for information. While this isn’t necessarily an encyclopedia, it is a source for you to have thoughts and maybe challenges to the way that you think. It may introduce something that you weren’t aware of and then may challenge you to do something with that knowledge. In my book, Because, I talk about the causes of preferences and desires like this. I I figured out the cause of why I need to do this. Well, let’s talk about what this is. What this is is I don’t like to not know something.



I know it’s a double negative. I also don’t like to partially know something. In fact, I think I my my distaste for partially knowing something is stronger than my desire to know something. And if you want to put that in terms of my book, it means the monster is stronger for me knowing more than just a little bit than the unicorn for me desiring to know something. If you’re the same way, you may find yourself going down rabbit holes all the time. You may find yourself dwelling on something that that other people just pass by.



You may even get accused of overthinking, fixating, and dwelling. And you are doing none of those things. Because if one person says it’s a combustion engine, and you go, “Well, what do you mean combustion? What what’s combusting? Is something blowing up? What does that mean? How did that work? How do the things blowing up make something turn? When did that when did we invent this? Where did this come from? What other versions of that are there available?” You just want to know because a combustion engine isn’t enough. You feel like you just opened up a folder in your brain, but now it’s empty. And that doesn’t feel good. At least that’s the way it works for me. And if it works that way for you, that explains why you have a lot of very full folders in your brain.



Segmenting Your Desire for Deep Dives



Now, there are people who segment this, people who have learned to segment this. In fact, I encounter people like this all the time. They segment it into the thing that they do for a living. Sometimes it’s a job, sometimes it’s a career, sometimes it’s a calling. And there’s a whole podcast on that.



I find people like that very interesting. And maybe you’re one of them. And I apologize. I don’t mean to be offensive in when I say I’m fascinated, but also I can’t relate. When someone in their free time, off time, lifetime stays on the surface of everything, but then for their job they take pretty deep dives into things.



I wonder why they don’t take deep dives into other things. And you could say, “Well, Mark, because we don’t have the time for it.” And I would counter as I always do. No, you mean you don’t have the energy, which is fine because we’re still on the same page and in agreement as to why you don’t do that. You just don’t have the energy. You’re busy doing other stuff.



“Surface Dwellers” vs. Hidden Hobbies



But I find that if you have the capability and the desire to take these deep dives into knowledge in the way that I’m describing in which you say it’s not en...