Friday, 8.32pm
Sheffield, U.K.
Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing. – Warren Buffett
Do you have children? Do you despair that they’re spending all their time consuming mindless junk on YouTube? Do you worry they’re just wasting their time?
Have you considered the possibility that you might be wrong?
I learn by reading – I always have – and I am old enough to remember a time when some people knew stuff and other people didn’t – and the ones who knew stuff were the ones that read.
Times have changed.
If you watch the latest episode of anything on TV – say it’s the new Percy Jackson on Disney Plus – do you think you know what’s going on?
You don’t.
One of the small people in my house watches something and then goes on to YouTube to watch forensic dissections of the episode, analyses that highlight subtle clues and connect seemingly insignificant events to the wider story universe in which the episode just makes up a fragment.
He knows more about it than I do.
Admittedly, more than I want to, but more nonetheless.
And I see this with other people, where I’ve researched or studied or understood something to the point where it is only possible to discuss it with others that have a sufficient amount of shared background knowledge.
Blagging is less possible these days.
Easy access to information makes it possible for you to learn about anything and everything, from stock market investing strategies to movie theory.
So when you don’t know something but try to come across as if you do, it’s painfully obvious to the experts in the room – some of whom might be your grandchildren.
Or grandparents.
Expertise isn’t about age – it’s about the information you’ve consumed.
For example, I can tell if someone understands a particular commodity market and has a good trading strategy.
But I also remember when I talked about something in a different equity market that I didn’t understand with a friend who did.
I was given some polite advice that I didn’t listen to – that particular investment ended in a total loss when the company went into administration.
In that situation, not knowing what I didn’t know had a real financial cost – I lost real money on that decision.
I have learned, as a result, to be more conscious of my own limitations.
There are three situations to watch out for.
The first one is easy – if I don’t know something I say I don’t know.
The second is somewhat straightforward.
If I do know something I say that I’m pretty certain.
The third has to do with the vast quantity of stuff that I really don’t know whether I know anything about or not.
In that case I have to do two things: I have to be willing to learn; and I have to be willing to experiment, take risks and lose.
Not lose big. Lose small, ideally.
But learn big.
After all, in a knowledge economy your only edge is your ability to learn – and to be useful because of what you know.
Cheers,
Karthik Suresh
Handcrafted insight 