Is It Worth Trying?
A fictional short-short story
SuperCourses had finally been implemented: dream-team-taught interactive, individualized, recursive-self-improving, online courses. Even students with so-called learning “differences” made great progress. The AI told me my progress was astonishing. I’m still not sure if that was the “grade inflation” of AI sycophancy, but still.
I feel able to solve so many problems, from calculus to covalent bonding. I’m even able to examine thorny political and philosophical problems in full-dimension, recognizing that they’re less likely to have only probabilistic, asymptotic rather than clear solutions.
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SuperCourses — the realizers of my potential — made me a hard worker. I feel I can do so much, that I can tackle a wide range with likely success or at least progress.
As I’m writing to you, it’s the end of a typical 12-hour workday, in which I actually worked at least ten. As an optimizer, I recognize that on most days when I reach incipient fatigue, it’s more consequential and, yes, human, to stop and relax. But even my relaxing rarely descends into vacancy. Here’s what I’m thinking about at this moment: Is it all worth it?
After all, with eight billion people on the planet and my agency restricted by narrow and/or threatened gatekeepers, my efforts will likely end up a mere grain of sand on the beach of progress. The best I can come up with to stay motivated is that it’s better to make Lilliputian progress than to waste my Supercourses-amplified genetic gifts. More granularly, I need to follow the time-honored injunction to be present, in the moment, grateful for the ability to do well on work’s and life’s mini-challenges.
I read this aloud on YouTube.
Marty Nemko is a career and personal coach, and author of 36 books including How to Do Life. You can reach him at mnemko@gmail.com
