Finding knowledge easily

We always think we need to know a lot to get things done. Actually the opposite is sometimes true. We need to know very little, because someone else has discovered the knowledge for us.

One of the big barriers to motivation and being inspired to do something, especially to do something new, is the fear that we don’t have the knowledge to pull something off. After all, there’s nothing worse than starting a project and then getting a little way into it and then realizing that we need some technical skill or other facility in order to progress. We’ve all had these feelings of inadequacy at such moments. We’ve all had the feeling of feeling stumped at points in our movement toward some goal. Here’s how things typically go.

We think of an idea. Sometimes this comes as a flash of inspiration… We feel galvanized, motivated to move forward. Almost in an instant we see the benefits of achievement and often the plan seems to have been handed to us by some higher power. We’re full of inspiration.

At this point we might actually begin to do some initial work on the idea, and this motivates us further.

Then comes the first shadow of doubt. We realize we need some knowledge to put our plan into action and… horror… we don’t have that knowledge. The next thing we know, we doubt the soundness of the idea right down to the deepest levels. Our thoughts go from “Yeah!” to “But…” and then rapidly, like a runaway car, picking up momentum as it careers uncontrollably down the hill of our desires, to “Not so sure…” and then onto “And then there’s to think about…” and at last to the crash, and “It’s a stupid idea. Why did I ever think of that in the first place?” Even worse, “I’m so dumb… Who am I to think I can do this…”

One minute we’re flying high with inspiration. The next moment we’re crawling along the floor in the mud, wondering where we are heading or sometimes not even caring where we are heading. There lies our inspiration, our idea child, at the bottom of the hill, our gleaming car crushed into a heap of junk, flattened by a truck. The car is our idea. The truck is our lack of the knowledge we need to put our idea into practice.

Sound familiar? Anyone who has flown with an idea and then come quickly to earth will recognize this scenario. We have the idea, and it seems sound, the goal attainable. Then the reality of what we need to do in order to make real progress seems to drop on us like a fog. We see the gaps in our abilities and knowledge, and then come the death knell for that wonderful inspiration.

What’s the answer? Should we struggle on with our idea, and somehow find the knowledge we need to make it work? Or do we give up, and accept that the knowledge we need in order to reach the goal is just too difficult, and the cost is too high?

A different look at the problem

Well, let’s look at the problem. Or rather let’s look at what the problem isn’t.

The problem is sometimes—and sometime very often—not that we don’t have the specific knowledge, but that our thinking is flawed. We greatly overestimate the amount of knowledge we need to do something. The reason for this is that when we begin something new, we see a huge vista unfolding before us. This vista, like standing on the edge of a precipice and looking out over a stunning landscape is both exhilarating and frightening. We see our dream as how it might look in reality (the wonderful landscape) but we don’t know how to get there (the precipice).

We see the huge gaps in our knowledge and the fear paralyses us. This is something to do with the way the human mind works. The human brain has a great ability for examining things, for dissecting them and discovering how they work. It seems almost to be a need, this desire to pull things apart and see what makes them tick. This can be a great asset, such as when we really need to discover the smallest details of how things work, and can be seen manifested in the great discoveries of science and medicine, when a doctor, though painstaking analysis, discovers the reason for a certain disorder or disease.

It can also be destructive, such as when a two-year old decides to use this inbuilt human capacity for discovery to see how daddy’s watch will handle being used as a makeshift hammer on a brick patio.

But sometimes we need to turn off this human capacity, or need, to pull things apart and see what makes them tick. If we can do that, we can often see that the amount of knowledge we require is much less than we thought.

So how can we do it? How can we turn off our desire to need to know all the nitty-gritty details so that we can move forward with the knowledge we have? The answer is simple, because you’ll find that you’re doing this all the time. In fact, if we constantly did follow our desire to know, life would be pretty much impossible, even unbearable (and I’m sure you know some of those people who need to know everything and they can make life pretty unbearable.)

Just imagine it if every time you did any tiny little thing, you had to know exactly how it worked, or understood the mechanics of the thing. In the morning you are desperate for a hot cup of tea, but you can’t make the tea until you know exactly how the electricity runs from the plug, up the wire, into the heating element and is then transformed into hear. Or you want to listen to the radio, but you can’t turn it on until you’ve studied the physics of radio waves. Nightmare… Especially not being able to have a hot cup of tea in the morning…

Luckily for our sanity, we don’t do this. We hit a button and the kettle boils. We hit another button and the radio begins to play.

The need to know

But when we come to doing new things, especially large projects such as starting a business, or going into some important area of our life to make big changes, this is exactly what we do. We are filled with doubt or, even worse, fear. And this brings out that human capacity—need—to know as much as we can before moving forward.

We are so overwhelmed by what we don’t know that we lose sight of the fact that we often really don’t need to know that much. And then we become paralyzed.

So what is the answer? A good way of looking at it is to use the same type of thinking—or more specifically non-thinking—that we use in our everyday moments. This can be called “Black Box Thinking”.

This is a concept I heard from that great thinking man Edward de Bono, and it’s an extremely useful concept when dealing with new knowledge.

For a moment, just close your eyes and think of a black box. Imagine it, a plain black box with a red button on top. You can’t see inside the box because it’s black! But you know that when you press that button a bell will ring. You don’t need to care what’s inside the box. You only need to care that when you press the button, a bell will ring. If the box was transparent, you might be able to see the wires and bell and battery and all that complicated stuff, but you don’t need to know or care. Only that it works…

The fact is that everything is a black box to someone, and (almost) everything is a transparent box to someone.

Let’s look at just a few of these.

Your car.

This a big black box—to me at any rate. I know that if you do certain things, the engine will start (or roar into life if you have a beefy sports car) and the car will move forward. But this is just button pushing. If I take a look at the engine, I’m more or less clueless. The inner workings of the machine are a mystery to me. A mechanic would know how the engine works, but wouldn’t be able to explain the workings of the electronic system, because now we’re going into greater depth. A scientist or advanced technician might be able to explain the workings of the electronics, but wouldn’t understand the physics of how electricity actually moves along a wire. For that you would need a physicist. And so it goes…

Now, I bet you haven’t got into your car recently and said to yourself, “You know, if I really want to become a good driver I really got to start getting a grip on the dynamic efficiency ratio of the camshaft.” Or “Before I plan that road trip next week I’d better brush up on the torque integer of the rear axle.”

(Actually, I just invented those two pieces of scientific techno-jargon, but they sound convincing, even though I say so myself. And if you do say things like that to yourself, you’re in real trouble.)

Another example of a black box is this computer. I know how to turn it on, and write words, and eventually post this to my website for anyone on the internet to see. But mostly it’s a black box. I know very little—practically nothing—about computer programming or the inner mechanics of a computer or the amazing technology that makes the internet run. But none of this stops me from using it. I just push buttons and use the technology to achieve my aims, which is to reach you, the reader, wherever you may be on this planet.

But, I can hear you say, those are objects. What about processes? What about knowing how to do something. Is it the same?

In a word, yes. Or absolutely…

For instance, I needed to find out about my tax situation in regards to something fairly complicated. Now, I don’t know about you, but to me anything to do with tax is a definite black box. It’s also a sleep-inducing black box at that. I didn’t even think of trying to understand it. I just picked up the phone and called an accountant. Within ten minutes I knew what I needed to do—something very simple as it turned out—and he did the rest. Magic!

You have enough knowledge

So it is with most things. We don’t need to know how they work, only that they do. Other people know how they work. You can concentrate on what you do best, and enjoy doing. If you get bogged down in trying to understand things in detail before you start to put your ideas into practice you’ll likely never get anywhere, not to mention become unmotivated. Meddling in stuff you don’t understand may even lead to something much worse, as the poem by Hilaire Belloc, explains:

Lord Finchley tried to mend the Electric Light
Himself. It struck him dead: And serve him right!
It is the business of the wealthy man
To give employment to the artisan

Luckily for us we are all wealthy in our own way, in that we can all give employment to someone. We can give employment to those who make the black boxes we need to get things done. We can stop thinking—and worrying—about them, and get on with achieving something instead.

Of course, this non-thinking mode of thinking isn’t something to be used all the time. If we do, we begin to make decisions unconsciously, and that can be the worst thing in some situations. In fact, in many cases we need to recover our capacity for analysis and learn how to take things apart, as we naturally did as a child. But to become paralyzed by doubt, to not move forward because of a fear of lack of unneeded knowledge is something we can do without.

Find your transparent boxes

When you want to do something and a lack of knowledge seems to be holding you back, ask yourself this question: How much of this knowledge can remain as a black box with a button on top. You’ll often find that a lot of the knowledge you need can easily be turned into a black box. Someone else knows what goes on inside. You just need to press the button and concentrate on the stuff you know (your transparent boxes) and leave the workings of the black boxes to someone else. There will always be someone who understands the black boxes you need.

Then you can move forward.

And strangely enough, as you do move forward, those black boxes have a tendency to become more and more… transparent as you press the buttons.

So what things are you putting off for fear that you don’t possess the right knowledge? What black boxes are you trying to see inside when all you need to do is push a button?
What worries could disappear by realizing you don’t need to know everything to be successful at something?

Now find the black boxes you need, and push those buttons.

doubt Edward de Bono knowledge