Unknown Unknowns

In the spirit of cataloging all things that have made a difference to my life, once I had learned about them and cognitively understood them -

Three Types

The topic of:

• Known Knowns

• Known Unknowns

• Unknown Unknowns

Spot the one that stands out - that’s the most dangerous.

Life is all about opportunities and threats. All opportunities and threats can be categorized under one of these three titles above.

Let’s go through each of them.

Known Knowns - these are things that you know about and understand. E.g. I know that nutrition keeps me alive.

Known Unknowns - these are things that you are aware of but don’t know how they work. E.g. I know that autophagy exists, but I don’t know the low level microbiological mechanisms that take place for cellular clean up.

Unknown Unknowns - these are things that you don’t even know exist! These are the most dangerous of all types. They might kill you or make you a billionaire. 🙈

Alex Hormozi talks frequently about how people can get stuck or hit a ceiling as to their potential. The reasons are:

• Limiting beliefs

• Lack of Knowledge

• Lack of Skill

Knowing/Unknowing is directly tied to limiting beliefs, lack of knowledge and lack of skill.

If you know that you don’t know something you can learn it. If you know that you don’t have a skill you can practice it. If you know that you are thinking in a limited manner, you can correct it.

If you are unaware of some knowledge, skill or a correct way of thinking - you are stationary, stuck, out of gas.

How to Win

With knowledge there is how wide your knowledge spans and how deep it spans.

The first step is to have a very wide and shallow knowledge - read as much as you can about all subjects. In the areas that you find interesting or want to grow in go deeper on those.

Reading to the left and to the right of the area you find interesting will cross pollinate new ideas and reasoning.

Outside of self education, having a mentor, or someone who is an order of magnitude beyond where you are, will also will uncover glinting nuggets of knowledge for you to pick up.

Finding a mentor will mean physically expanding the people to you talk to and who you network with. Physical presence, familiarity are all required. Get on it if you are an introvert.