You are not surrounded by idiots...you might be the idiot.

Happy Monday fam.

My gym fellow and countryman Lisili Imbova gave me a book.

From the headline, I think by now you may already know the name of the book because it is popular.

A girl also told me she saw it on TikTok.

Anyway… Surrounded by Idiots is the name of the book. The author is Thomas Erikson.

Now, the book is somewhere in the house and I did not read it entirely.

But I flipped through it on Sunday while resting my body from Saturday’s workout as I read most of the relevant parts to me.

In the book, I saw some bits of myself and other people I also know.

And I can tell you it is a good book if you want to understand your behavior and that of those around you. Truly as the headline says; you may notice some idiots around you or maybe find out you might be the idiot. As we are going to see.

Anyway. As you know, in this community, we don’t give an Eff about popular things. Especially things as serious and impactful as books.

Listen.

I noticed that the book was answering questions that I had already found answers to in another book. And so I did not treat it so seriously.

Even the best thing was that the other book was older and was a clear business and psychology text. Again, the book called Surrounded by Idiots sounds and even looks like a self-help book for the broken spirit. It is for this reason I am going to rely more upon my insights from the older book.

So what was the book?

It is called leadership and self-deception: Getting outside the box.

This book was not written to investigate human behavior and grouping them.
This book was written to investigate one big question about people.

That is; how can people simultaneously create their own problems, be unable to see that they are creating their own problems, and yet resist any attempts to help them stop creating their own problems?

From this question, we can connect back to Surrounded by idiots and realize what being an idiot is.

Being an idiot is creating your own problems, not seeing that you are creating your own problems, and resisting advice or help to stop creating your own problems.

To be surrounded by idiots is being around people who simultaneously create their own problems while being unable to see and even resist help to stop creating personal problems.

Now can you be honest with yourself and tell if you are an idiot or not?

Can you see some idiots around you?

Anyway.

It does not matter whether you are surrounded by idiots or not. What matters is yourself knowing if you are an idiot. And so once you know you are an idiot, you can start to get yourself out of the box and hopefully help someone else around you stop being an idiot. The answers to getting yourself out of the box are in the old book. Which you can find at the end of this letter.

According to this old book, which was written by a team of scholars, being in the box or being an idiot kills performance.

It kills your productivity.

It waters down your creativity.

It stands in the way of personal improvement and leadership.

Idiocy is the phenomenon at the heart of many organizational and personal failures.

And so my take is that idiots are like ignorant people. People who do not know enough about themselves and the world.

My ego allows me to conclude that I am not an idiot unless I am completely unaware about myself which is likely not the case. I think certainly you are not an idiot simply by your choice to be part of this community.

But we are still left with one question. How do you get out of the box and stop being an idiot?

Read it here. It is only 30 seconds. GO!