2 Knowledge Pillars Leveraged by Lifelong Learners

Your success is directly related to understanding two knowledge pillars. The first pillar is the immutable facts of how the world works; your beliefs and opinions do not change how the world behaves. The second pillar is the ability to make decisions based on the facts you observe; intellectual rationalizations of poor judgment don’t improve your situation. Using facts and logic creates the wisdom required to understand, navigate, and leverage the Cynical World successfully.

The Goal

“What do you want?” I asked.

“I’ve been trying to get a promotion, but I’ve been passed over twice.”

“So what have you done to improve your situation?”

Without hesitation, he replied, “Nothing.”

Inspired by a common maxim, I queried, “So if you didn’t do anything to change, how do you expect the result to be different?”

I’ve had many colleagues and acquaintances share the same sentiment — they expect rewards without expending any effort to earn them.

Success is different for each person. However, there is agreement that thriving is better than surviving. Happiness is better than stress and despair. Relationships with intimacy and affection are better than detachment and indifference.

Your success, in every aspect of your life, is proportional to your ability to acquire, comprehend, and leverage knowledge. To conquer the Cynical World, you must become a successful “knowledge worker”. You will become successful in your endeavors if you embrace self-development.

Even if you are highly educated, you should never stop acquiring new knowledge. Even if you are a laborer, your job, occupation, trade, or profession requires knowledge. Without constantly updating your knowledge, you will be left behind by others who do.

Two Self-development Pillars

The primary knowledge pillars that you need to build your success are science and logic.

You may quibble that you already know what you need to know to be successful — and it isn’t science or logic.

That’s fine. I suggest that whatever topic you have decided you need to know, falls into the two categories.

Science

When you accept that everything in the physical world must obey physical rules, the next step is understanding the actual physical rules.

Science is the codification of the knowledge about how things work.

The better you understand science, the better you understand the physical world.
- Gary Bozek (2024)

Science deals with facts.

You may have your opinions and beliefs, but they do not override facts.

When I encounter someone struggling to achieve a goal, often the root cause of their failure is reliance on a belief or opinion. When they think that their belief or opinion makes it true, they run headlong into immovable facts.

You may think the world is flat. It is irrelevant how strongly you believe — that doesn’t change the reality that the earth is round. It can be proven scientifically; it is indisputable.

This may seem like a silly scenario, but it demonstrates how beliefs and opinions do not change reality.

Everything in the physical world obeys the rules of the sciences; go against them at your peril!!!

The more information, data, rules, and facts you understand, the better equipped you are to succeed.

Logic

Knowledge, in and of itself, is static. The purpose of knowledge isn’t just to make your brain bigger. It provides no benefits unless it is used.

To be successful, you need to leverage the base of knowledge you accumulate.

To be successful, you need to take action!

Logic is a branch of science that deals with the formal principles of reasoning; it relates to drawing inferences or conclusions.

Logic is the foundation of decisions.

If you can’t understand and comprehend a problem, identify pertinent information, generate options and analyze their consequences, evaluate alternatives, and consider risks and uncertainty, you won’t make rational, competent decisions.

Have you ever thought about how many decisions you make in a day? They may be mundane, for example, which sock to put on first. Or they may be impactful, like the words you use to address a friend, colleague, or spouse.

Your results are directly proportional to the quality of your decisions.

Poor decisions can occur if insufficient facts are known (or mistaking opinions and beliefs for facts). As we say in the IT profession, “Garbage In, Garbage Out.”

Often poor decision-making starts by deciding you already know all the relevant facts. If you are missing key information, then the decision quality and results will suffer.

Also, you may not understand the actual decision-making process. The steps of effective decision-making are seldom taught during formal education. Your feedback loop, on the correctness of your decision, is the assessment from a parent, teacher, or friend. You infer that your decision is correct based on the evaluation from others and modulate your process to deliver answers that meet someone else’s expectations.

Blindly trusting the decisions of people in authority is detrimental to your success. I’ve often opposed a teacher’s evaluation. I’ve won the argument when I corroborated with an indisputable fact. Others, who didn’t question the teacher, were led astray by a well-meaning teacher.

Questioning the decisions of others is a fundamental skill to conquer the Cynical World. Ensuring your decision-making process isn’t undermined by lack of information, misunderstandings, or biases is also key to success.

Self-Development Guidance

I encourage you to devote yourself to lifelong learning. Once you adopt it as a practice, you can’t help but be successful in your endeavors.

Most people will agree that we live in a knowledge and a service economy. Knowledge is one of the currencies of the digital age.

Most high-paying jobs are based on leveraging knowledge. You may possess a trade, degree, PhD, or professional designation and earn more than average.

There are exceptions: dirty jobs that nobody wants to do may not require higher education but are compensated well.

Service workers are among the lowest paid in the digital age. These jobs are characterized by low skill or knowledge requirements.

It should be obvious that improving your situation requires upgrading your knowledge.

It is easier than ever to acquire knowledge. The wealth of civilized knowledge and expertise is available free via the Internet. You can access it for the cost of connectivity.

There are educational courses and training offered for free or low cost (compared to formal education). It can all be accessed from the comfort of your computer.

The caveat with abundant data is that you need sound judgment to discern good information from bad. You must determine if it is based on science (facts) or someone’s belief and opinion. It is essential to differentiate whether biases exist (your own or others) that are not based on facts. If you can master identifying real facts, you will be able to educate yourself and improve every aspect of your life.

The dependency for acquiring valuable knowledge is having the sound judgment to determine what is and isn’t based on science (facts). Your decision-making processes are key to obtaining a solid foundation of knowledge.

Benefits

Few people actively work on increasing their knowledge and decision-making skills. You will reap enormous benefits if you work to improve your knowledge and skills.

Most people think they must work harder than others to get attention or achieve what they want. I suggest that you aspire to work SMARTER!

You only have to work 5% harder than others, they will make you look good.
- Gary Bozek (2024)

Intelligent people aren’t smart because they know a lot; intelligent people know what they don’t know.

Most people labor to make incremental gains. They will learn a new technique or skill that improves on what they already know or do. Although nothing is wrong with incremental improvements, it’s what everyone else does. So they don’t stand out from the pack.

Lifelong learners will educate themselves on a broader range of knowledge: topics outside of their primary job or interests. They innovate by integrating disparate subject matter into a new solution. They create enormous opportunities by expanding their knowledge and leapfrogging the competition.

Be Cynical,

TCG