Knowledge Acquisition/Knowledge Application

In my quest to always learn new information, I decided last week to sign up for a masterclass given by someone I really enjoy watching on YouTube. I did everything I needed to do, I came home from work and pretty much went right to bed. I wanted to wake up early and make sure that I had no issues signing on and getting any information that would be available to view. To be honest, I get the same feeling every time I sign up and get ready to watch something like this. It’s a mix between excitement, fear and just happiness to gain more knowledge. In the end, I was happy enough with the content and a little disappointed that it went longer than it said it was going to go. The only thing I really missed out on was the Q&A, but it frustrated me. Whenever I watch things like these, my main goal is to walk away with at least one thing that I know will help me. It may seem obvious that you will walk away with one thing, but when you watch someone on a regular basis, there is a small chance that all the short videos you have watched over time have now just turned into one big video and you get nothing new. I’ve always taken some pride in the amount of information I consume. When I was younger and especially in school, I didn’t want to read or learn anything new. All I really wanted to do was either play, watch or think about baseball. Now that I am older, I realize that you will never get any better at anything unless you find out more information. So, over the last ten years or so that has been my mission. I want to be someone that is recognized as a continued learner. That is exactly what made me want to take this class. As I watched he mentioned the words, knowledge acquisition and knowledge application. I very quickly learned what he meant. The way I heard it was that knowledge is a two-part equation. The first part is to acquire knowledge. The second part is to put that knowledge to use. Sounds very obvious and basic. He went on to say that if all you are doing is acquiring knowledge, but you are not applying it, you are like an old library. That is when it all came crashing down on me. For the last ten years, I have been slowly building up a library of information, but not really doing a whole lot of application. That means that I am just like an old library. I had visions of the old library where I grew up, the smell of old books and the echo of nobody around. That means that no matter how much information I have in my head or how much information I continue to acquire, if I am not using it, it’s kind of worthless. I know that I am applying some of it, so maybe worthless is a little bit of a strong word. But how much am I really applying? Also, how do I find a way to apply more of what I am learning? I think the first thing I need to do is to make sure that what I am learning is actually something that I can use in life. Learning to be a pilot might be something that would be fun, but if I never plan on flying, is that the best use of my time? What is my job, what are my hobbies?  Those are the areas that I really need to focus on. Maybe I want to spend some time trying to figure out who I want to be? We all have something about is that we want to improve. The main reason I took this class in the first place was because I wanted to be a better communicator. I don’t have a fear of talking in front of people, but I do worry that I am not always clear or that I can go off topic. I want to be able to organize my thoughts better before I start to speak about something. If we stick with that same example, I can learn everything I can about communicating, but if I don’t ever communicate with anyone, that information is wasted. I want to find out what topics I should be focusing on, then I want to make sure that I am remembering what I am learning. After that, I need to make sure that I am applying it every chance I can. What I want to focus on for the next few months is finding ways to remember what I have read, and then finding opportunities to use it. I encourage everyone to go out and find some new information that they can use and then applying it as often as they can. Can we find ways to become an expert in a certain thing or a certain area. Maybe I won’t ever be an expert communicator, but I can be an expert at a certain area of communicating like standing in front of people and giving a short meeting.