Knowledge Is Power or Knowledge is Power

Everyone says knowledge is power. But is it?

If you didn’t notice the title, take a look. If you know the proper way to write a title but do what I did and include both, is knowledge power? Sounds more to me like knowledge is going unused.

When people ask what I’m doing after graduation this May, I say I don’t know (although I learned I could walk this weekend in December instead of May, though of course, I decided not to do that).

I keep saying I am in a stage of learning in my life. But what does that even mean? Life should be filled with continuous learning. Yes, of course. But, I’m such a numbers person so I think like this. If I work 50 or so hours a week right now (excluding what I do for myself), that means I have 118 hours I can spend elsewhere. Which seems to be a lot until we take out the time I allocate to things like fitness, sleep, eating, driving, etc.

In the future I see myself working at least 80 hours each and every week. That means I have 78 hours or less for fitness, sleep, eating, driving, etc. at that point. Bottom line being, I will have less time I would be willing to allocate to learning and such. That being said, I do see myself continuing the habit of reading at least 20 pages a night well throughout my life, will likely increase that as my reading speed increases also, thinking 50 pages a day is adequate especially as Warren Buffet and others dedicate over 2 hours to reading each day.

“If you aren’t working over 100 hours every week you won’t advance to be one of the best in your field, I just haven’t seen it happen.”

Professor Parker said in class one day. With a 100 hour work week, there is limited time to allocate to learning, but that just means that the remaining 68 hours must be used very wisely.

Back to knowledge is power. It is the potential for power, not true power. Without action, knowledge is nothing. The story of the Wright brothers has been on my mind lately. 
As the Wright brothers were working on designing a plane, there was another gentleman more accomplished in many ways. He had achieved investments from other people. He had knowledge beyond that of many others. However, his planes did not take flight, they kept failing. He knew everything that there was to know and knew that his plane should fly but it did not. This man was Samuel Langley.

I love Elon Musk and the example he sets for this overall idea of applying knowledge and not just acquiring it. Not only did he learn about Aerospace Engineering, but he also took action and invested in SpaceX and now runs it along with Tesla, The Boring Company and his work with the Hyperloop planning. He not only acquired extensive knowledge in numerous areas but applied that knowledge and himself.

Much too often people tend to learn things and talk about them for a day or two and then… forget them because they did not apply them. This happens frequently, much too frequently.

Now, if the end goal is simply to acquire knowledge, then cool. But without applying the knowledge that is gained, then we are not becoming any better than we were before. If you look at anyone who has impacted the world at a large level, this was second nature to them.

So for me, it’s all about the balance. Yes, it is a period of learning as I am preparing to graduate in May with my bachelor’s degree. Yet, there is constantly going to be the emphasis on application. Knowledge alone does not matter much. If there is no application — no action — then the knowledge does not have much of a purpose.

The most important thing that I think I have learned and applied recently is understanding what it takes for people to experience certain emotions. I don’t feel productive unless I do tons of things throughout my day, at least others would say it’s a ton of things, to me, it’s just routine.

I realized that my happiness is only experienced if certain things happen. What needs to happen for me to feel happy is not too much, if someone is grateful or positive or kind, I am happy. For others, there may be many other standards that need to be met for them to enable themselves to experience happiness. However, that’s all self-imposed and we know that we choose our emotions. So why don’t we apply that power and change what emotions we regularly experience?