How you know vs. what you know

At a recent job interview, I was asked to rate myself on a certain skill needed for the job. Without hesitation, I said 10. The heat was turned up from there. Later, I wondered aloud if I even ranked as a 5, smiling as I asked the question.

Fortunately, my humor was not lost on the interviewer. I got the job. Evidently, I had impressed him enough with my actual knowledge on the subject at hand.

Later, it dawned on me to question his question—e.g., do you mean how much I can retain in my head at any given time or my work ethic in hunting down answers needed to get the job done? Had I done that, I could have given him a two-part answer—7 in terms of conscious retention and 10 in the relentless pursuit of answers.

Philosophically, this takes on a common error—the fallacy of omniscience. Few, if any, will tell you flat out: I know everything! Yet, too many act that way. It's an easy error to fall into, especially if you don't pay conscious attention to the fact that reason is man's means of knowledge.

Today, something important dawned on me—that I pride myself more on how I know than what I know. I have learned an enormous amount about IT methods and operations over the past decade. However, more important than that is how I learned so much. Simple hard work is part of it, of course. Not spending hours daily idling away on the Internet or gabbing/grousing with colleagues is part of it. But, fundamentally, the how is this—looking beyond countless distractions in my field of vision to the core reality at hand, guided by the power of reason and the moral code it upholds.

An analogy that comes to mind is a picture I see often of a common moment in professional basketball games—the back of a basketball player as he faces a tiny net, preparing for his foul shot, while hundreds of fans for the opposing team wave all manner of distractions behind it. What looks daunting is the player's opportunity to literally stand and deliver. The focus he needs to summon from within himself is intense, tossing out what is unimportant and tuning in to what matters most to him.

In pattern, this is what I do in IT...not for a few seconds or minutes, but across days, months, years. Of course, to keep it natural, to remain a well-rounded human, this is a cultivated habit, integrated with the need to exchange ideas constructively with others who are not technical (of course) and those who are technical but too often get caught up in one or more countless distractions.

Practically, this distinction is critical. That is, I'm walking into a new job soon, knowing a lot but needing to know a helluva lot more. I can do this confidently because I know precisely how to gain more knowledge, gain it quickly and put it to practical use quickly...and have fun doing it.