A wise friend of mine once taught me that knowledge is nothing but actionable information. In other words, if an information helps us to act better, it is a knowledge. But I also feel that things keep moving back and forth between the information bucket and the knowledge bucket. A few years back I tried this experiment with some of my friends who are software engineers. I gave them some basic calculus problems that they were really good at when they were in high schools. They all failed to solve those problems. This is because we have moved the information on how to solve calculus problems from our knowledge bucket to our information bucket. And that is because this information doesn’t help us acting better in our daily life any more. However, it used to. When our purpose of life was to secure high marks in the examinations, we gathered related information to act better. If I had given the same problems to my friends who are mathematics teachers, I am sure they would have solved those pretty quickly. And the reason is, this information still help them act better in their work and that’s why they have kept it in their knowledge bucket. Sometimes we love to keep things in our information bucket that did not and will not help us act better, ever. More we are able to get rid of those information, more we will be able to focus on our actions. And, at the end of the day, it is all our actions that matter.
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AuthorAbhimanyu Gupta lives in Chesterfield, Missouri with his wife Nilanjana & son Anusurya. His profession is software testing and his passion are music and books. He can be reached via Email, LinkedIn or Facebook. Archives
January 2017
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