What is the great common denominator of intellectual accomplishment? In math, science, economics, history, or any subject, the answer is the same: great thinkers notice patterns.
They see patterns no one else has thought of, patterns no one else has paid any attention to. Thinkers notice what goes along with what, and they consider the meaning behind those patterns.
Take time to consider patterns in your world that you’ve never thought about before.
“I don’t care what you do, you have to understand how things work. Not just thinking about what you’re doing, but about what you’re not doing,” says George Bodrock.
“Now my business is waste. It’s not glamorous, but it’s important. But what we’re not doing enough of is finding natural techniques to reduce waste.”
That’s why George, of California’s Ecology Farms, a commercial waste management company, researches “vermistabization.” That’s the process of using worms to transform waste into a useful product. Bodrock supervises the use of 160 million worms who eat their weight in yard waste every day and in the process convert the waste into a soil nutrient.
“It’s the only real solution to the green waste problem. People are not going to give up growing lawns, gardens, and golf courses. We can take what they throw out and recycle it 100 percent.”
Bodrock calls the worms’ endless appetite for waste “the equivalent to a perpetual motion machine.” He says, “We can build supercomputers that can do a billion calculations a second, but when it comes to breaking down green wastes, there’s no computer to do the job. But we have to do it, and we have to keep looking for better ways. And when you do it right, you not only help the Earth, you’ll become rich in the bargain.”
Academic achievement, regardless of the subject matter, is characterized by an ability to decipher complex ideas and relationships. Experiments in language, math, and science show that the most basic building block of learning is independently observing patterns.
Silverman 1998