The amazing and valuable lazy ant effect [good in-depth article]

The evolutionary biology research team of Hokkaido University in Japan once conducted an experiment. They tracked three black ant colonies each consisting of 30 ants to observe their division of labor. It was found that most ants are very diligent, cleaning the ant nest, carrying food, and taking care of the young ants, almost without stopping. However, a small number of ants have nothing to do, looking around the ant colony all day long, never working. Biologists called these few ants \”lazy ants\” and marked them. The Blue-Haired Girl Hilda Season 2 on Baidu Netdisk [Mandarin + English] Cartoon + Theatrical Version 720P Ultra-HD What’s interesting is that when the research team cut off the food source of the ant colony, those diligent ants immediately became a mess . The \”lazy ants\”, on the other hand, took their time and led the ant colony to move to new food sources. It turns out that lazy ants are not lazy, but spend most of their time on reconnaissance. They seem to be idle, but they never stop thinking. This is the famous \”lazy ant effect\”. I was communicating with a senior student a few days ago and he told me a story. In the year he just graduated, he entered the same company as an intern with a classmate. In order to leave a good impression on his boss, he is the first one to arrive at the company every day and the last one to leave. During his internship, he worked overtime until 12 o\’clock almost every day. And his classmate comes and goes every day. Two months later, the company approved him as a regular employee, and he thought he was stable. As a result, he failed to become a full-time employee, but his classmates successfully stayed in that company. He was very angry and posted a comment on WeChat: \”60 days of hard work is just a joke!\” After the leader of his department saw it, he sent him two business reports, one for him and one for that person. of a classmate. His report was densely packed with thousands of words, but the content was quite satisfactory. In contrast, the other report, although it only has more than a thousand words, is logically clear and focused, making it easy to understand at a glance. The most important thing is that in the column of strategic analysis, he only mentioned a cursory sentence, while his classmates pointed out the company\’s advantages and disadvantages as well as the opportunities and risks hidden in the market in a profound and simple way. It turned out that while he was busy with trivial matters, his classmates had already thoroughly studied strategic issues. On Douban, there is a group called \”Kill Pseudo Diligence\”, which contains this very heart-wrenching sentence: \”Behind mechanical effort is just a habitual movement of muscles. This looks like diligence, but it is actually the brain. Lazy.\” The biggest gap between people is not the level of effort, but the depth of thinking. Without deep thinking, all diligence is in vain. Just like my senior, he was paralyzed by his superficial efforts. He superficially understood diligence as \”working until after 12 o\’clock every day\” and ignored the improvement of thinking. It wasn\’t until the end that I discovered that I was just using tactical diligence to cover up strategic laziness. I read \”The Speed ​​of Thinking\” before, and there was a story in the book that particularly impressed me. In a small town in California, there lived a young man who loved writing. He keeps writing every day and is determined to become an excellent student.Excellent novelist. However, the novels he wrote were always unsaleable and unappreciated. He was very distressed, so he went to the church and asked the priest: \”Please tell me, why do I write day and night, but my work does not make any progress?\” The priest did not answer directly, but asked: \”What do you do in the morning?\” He was a little confused and said: \”I am writing a novel.\” The priest asked again: \”What about the morning?\” He replied: \”I am also writing a novel.\” The priest continued to ask: \”What about the afternoon?\” Hearing this, the young man was a little bit Impatient: \”Besides eating and sleeping every day, I spend the rest of the time writing novels.\” \”Then when are you thinking?\” Looking at the young man who had no idea what his problem was, the priest said patiently: \”What you call diligence , is just repetitive and long-term endless busyness, there is nothing difficult. As long as the conditions are met, most people can do it. What is difficult is thinking. Without thinking, your novel will have no soul; without thinking, your diligence will It’s meaningless.” Yes, if you regard hard work as the only means of creation and don’t think about summarizing, why should you improve? There is this passage in the article \”The Confusion of Our Generation\”: \”Most people seem to be diligent, but it is just caused by laziness in thinking. Why stay up late reading until dawn, sleep only a few hours for several days in a row, and go without a holiday for a long time? Well, if these things are worth bragging about, then everyone on the assembly line has worked harder than you.\” A person who is too busy with chores and too lazy to think is doomed to fall into mediocrity. Getting rid of low-quality diligence and developing the habit of thinking is the first step to advance in your life. Syedhir Mullainathan, winner of the MacArthur Genius Grant, famously said: \”For any organization, it is important to leave a certain amount of slack. It is not a waste of resources, but makes the system more efficient.\” The earth rotates.” Similarly, for individuals, we also need to leave a certain amount of free time for ourselves to think about recharging and upgrading ourselves. Writer Li Shanglong once worked as a teacher at New Oriental. In the last year of working there, he made a request to the class leader: no classes on weekend nights. A colleague advised him: \”This will save you four to five thousand yuan a month!\” He gritted his teeth, but still said: \”Stop waiting in line.\” After that, every weekend night, while other colleagues were busy rushing While he went to the company to take classes to earn money, he stayed at home reading, watching movies, writing reading notes, and thinking about his personal value and life direction. As a result, the teaching and training industry has declined, and his colleagues have either lost their jobs or been forced to change careers. And he has become a best-selling author, earning millions a year. When he recalled this incident in the article \”Busy, But Don\’t Be Too Busy\”, he said bluntly: \”No matter how busy you are, you must give yourself some free time. During this time, you must relax yourself. Think about whether there is a better direction. Is there a better way? Just like in a team, there are always one or two leaders who are free, because they are responsible for thinking and setting better directions.\” The depth of a person\’s thinking determines the height of his life. Just like Li Shanglong, he is not like his colleagues.The days are spent spinning in the whirlpool of work, always busy. On the contrary, he separated himself from the busy life, leaving himself time to think and constantly looking for new paths in life. The French thinker Pascal wrote in \”Capriccio\”: Man is just a reed, the most fragile thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed. Cogito ergo sum. Only by leaving space for thinking in the busy life can people listen to the voice deep in the soul and find the most valuable path in life. Click to watch and be a \”lazy ant\” who is diligent in thinking!