The orange juice analogy

We evolved for scarcity but live in abundance
- Naval Ravikant

Centuries ago, the biggest challenge to learning was finding good sources of information. The internet was non-existent, libraries were scarce, and there were far fewer experts to consult. Today, we face the opposite problem. There are so many great sources of information that we often struggle under the overload.

But it doesn't have to be this way!

In fact, the problem is not often not the amount of things to learn, but how we approach it. Few of us feels the same sense of dread and futility when buying things online. Yes, there are an infinite number of choices, but when you only have a fixed budget, you can easily ignore most of those options. Likewise, when dining at an all-you-can-eat buffet, while you may get a little too optimistic about what you can actually eat, the constraint of a fixed-size plate means there are only so many bits of food that you'll actually need to try and eat.

In both cases, overload is overcome by using constraints that limit inputs to an amount that you can handle, rather than focusing externally at how much there is available.

But there is a further analogy, that can drive the point home even better.

The orange juice analogy

Suppose two people race to make some orange juice.

Each person has a jug and way more oranges than they can count; say, a whole truck-full, each. The race is then to see who can fill their jug first.

There are two approaches to winning this race:

Approach 1: Squeeze each orange one by one until it's dry, and then move on to the next orange.
Approach 2: Squeeze each orange as long as the juice is pouring fast, but move on to the next orange as soon as the juice slows down, even it's not empty.

Of these approaches, the second approach is likely to leave behind a large pile of half-squeezed oranges, but whoever uses it will will fill their jug much faster and win!

Squeezing knowledge from your sources

In learning, the oranges are your information sources (books, articles, videos, other people, etc.) and the juice is the knowledge that you extract from those sources.

To learn productively means to squeeze as much knowledge from your sources as possible. If you leave behind a lot of un-squeezed juice (e.g. half-read books, unfinished videos, etc.) that is totally fine! Instead of pushing through an unrewarding book, simply out of an obligation to finish what you started, you can dump it and accelerate your learning with a new book, video or project.

By focusing on knowledge gained instead of sources drained, you'll find your enjoyment of learning increasing as you start learning much more in the same amount of time as you used to spend focusing on a single source.

Incremental learning with Dendro

In a regular learning process, you start an article or book, and keep going until you finish it. This matches approach 1 above (i.e. the slow one).

In Dendro, you can take the faster approach in learning by doing the following:

Add Sources: These are the oranges you'll be squeezing juice from. Typically, you'll have more than you can ever get through, but we're not going to worry about this any more! Instead, we'll focus on how much you're actually getting from those sources.
Engage daily: Each day, log into Dendro and hit Engage. You'll notice that the overload of information is replaced with one single source at a time. This alone can make learning so much more relaxing and easier to focus. In turn, rather than wasting energy deciding what to learn next, you can simply start learning. You deal with what's in front of you, and try to squeeze some value from it. As with the oranges, if you notice that you're not getting much from a given bit of content, move on! To do this, you can click Remove from feed and it won't steal your attention again. On the other hand, if you've added a few useful notes but are finding your attention beginning to wane, just bookmark your spot and click Next.

Originally published at: https://georgios.blog/orange-juice-analogy/