You Can Only Know So Much, But Learning Has No Limits

The Fundamental Difference between Knowing and Learning:

The usual accepted belief is that people who know a lot are smart, intelligent, sophisticated, or whatever else you want to call them.

However, the less common belief is that people who love to learn and continue to learn in everything that they do are the ones who are truly wise and intelligent.

Of course having a lot of knowledge is highly valued. But it’s limiting. Those who remain fixed in their beliefs and views are missing out on a goldmine of information and, with that, happiness. When you “know” things, you form opinions and fixed beliefs that you choose to defend based on your current state of mind–not based on the varying viewpoints with which every issue arises.

On the other hand, when you continue to learn, you expand your sphere of knowledge in countless aspects. If you read a book about running a business, you may well know some things about running a business, but if you take that information and reach out to a friend with a Master’s in Business Administration, you may learn even more about running a business through his personal experiences and advice that you wouldn’t get from a book.

This is but one example, and more will be addressed below, but the fundamental difference between knowing and learning is this:

You can only know so much at one time–staying within your sphere of knowledge–but you can always learn more–expanding that sphere perpetually.

Learn where this idea come from:

If you’ve gotten this far in the article, you’re already on the right track, and you’re eager to learn more.

This idea comes mainly from a presentation given by Tom Chi, a co-founder of Google X and the creator of Google Glass. In his presentation, Chi discusses what he calls “5 Mental Debugs for Success,” drawing attention to his first point that “knowing is the enemy of learning, because knowing makes learning impossible.” He goes on to discuss the differences between the two and then a more scientific approach to explaining his idea: our brain actually stops chemical processes that allow us to take in new information. The presentation was originally given at A-Fest, the semiannual gathering of extraordinary individuals who share their ideas on personal growth which is hosted by MindValley.

Learn about the Benefits:

Here I will describe just a few of the benefits that can arise by keeping an open mind that is poised to adopt new beneficial information that can add to your own personal wealth of knowledge.

Your personal life a fantastic area to start, but other areas of your life like your relationships, career, and family are perfect as well! You may have gone to school, read some books, watched some videos and presentations, and you would have learned a whole lot about a wide range of topics. This is a fantastic start, but why should it ever be an end?

There are countless lessons to be learned from school, each topic from a book probably has a whole slough of other books from differing perspectives, and presentations almost always have more resource information to peruse through.

You can learn new skills such as speed reading or lucid dreaming–skills you wouldn’t learn in school. You can learn new strategies to processes that you know well such as business management or handling relationships with your friends. There’s countless new and existing areas of interest that you can improve on; discover your own!

Learn and Relearn, then Do and Redo:

See the trend here? Don’t just accept information as known, continuously add more and more knowledge to your sphere to see what you can achieve.

The process is simple: Learn something new, apply it to your life, then learn how you can build on that and then apply that to your life again. Repeat with new activities, beliefs, processes, and strategies. The possibilities are endless and you’ll only be more impressed by the great things that you accomplish!

Learn something new, apply it to your life, then learn how you can build on that an apply it again.

Below is the full video to Chi’s presentation given at A-Fest: