A new segment that will appear semi-regularly. Probably not weekly, but I'll do my best. Though I have lots of thoughts - most are not nearly as profound as I'd like them to be, but maybe they can provide a bit of random trivia to you, or better yet, maybe they could lead you to a few of your own profound thoughts . . . hmm, now there's something to think about.So yesterday Eric over at Working My Muse did a post around Realizing How Much I Don't Know. Funny thing this, because during my travels recently one of the sessions of training I was in covered a sort of "What You Know" topic. The three highlights we discussed? Well I have a little Pie o'Knowledge chart to show you. (ElanaJ - chart queen extraordinaire - might appreciate this!)
#1 - You know what you know.
Well, yeah, that's obvious. I know a lot of things about a lot of things. Some of them relevant to this adventure to be published, some of them not. Some of them important to life, some of them just simply random trivia. I know who I am, where I went to school, what I do for a living (sort of). I know the year, make and model of all the cars at my parents' house (there are a lot of cars) and I can sing every Taylor Swift song from both her albums (that's a whole other story). But yeah, I know what I know.
#2 - You know what you don't know.
Easy enough to make a list of these things. Also, like #1, fairly obvious. I don't know how to play the piano - though I wish I did. I don't know how to ride a motorcycle. I don't know why my office is an arctic ice box even though the thermostat is set at 85 degrees F. These are just a few of the many things I know that I don't know.
And the biggest piece of the pie?
#3 - You don't know what you don't know.
Well, yeah. I would list stuff here, but I can't seeing as if I knew that I didn't know it, it would then move into #2. So I don't know what I don't know.
Make sense? Okay then.
So what's the learning? Why am I babbling endlessly about this? Well, this may have been a training about some corporate strategy planning I was at, but this applies to writing as well.
The goal of it all is to figure out what you don't know you don't know, move it into what you know you don't know, so that you can learn more about it, and then move from there into knowing what you know.
It's just about continuing to learn. Continuing to grow and hone the craft and know that there will always be things you don't know you don't know, but as soon as you figure out that you don't know it, that big huge hunk of the pie gets just a little bit smaller and what you know, whether it's something you know or don't know, will get bigger.
Are we clear? Okay, good.
Just wanted to give you something to think about!
[Update: correction on the motorcycle driving - ride or drive, clearly I don't know how ;) Thanks Eric!]
3 comments:
Actually, that was pretty darn profound. Good strategy for life in general.
Also sounds like something parents could use on unsuspecting adolescents or young adults. "You don't even know what you don't know." LOL!
I like the concept of broadening the foundation of knowledge by investigating enough to find out what you need to know and moving up.
Good stuff! What else did you learn at those training sessions?
Thanks for reading my post. This is really good information, although I don't know how you would know things you "don't know don't know". I guess you could imagine or theorize about it. I'm trying to come up with a good example and not really doing a good job. Oh, and you don't drive a motorcycle - you ride it, like an iron horse. Sorry, just me being nitpicky since I DO ride motorcycles. Thanks for the post though. This is great stuff.
I do love that chart! And you have some great ideas to chew on here. Continuing to learn is the best thing we can do!
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