You Don't Get Extra Points for Understanding How Everything Works
Stop studying for "the test"
There’s a sneaky trap we engineers fall into:
We treat “understanding” like the goal.
But the world doesn’t reward us for comprehension.
It rewards us for helping people.
That’s it.
Stories from history
When Edison was asked what he thought of “the Einstein theory,” his reply shocked everyone:
I don’t think anything of Einstein’s theory because I can’t understand it.
Einstein’s papers were dense and challenging, and the practical applications of relativity weren’t yet clear.
Edison could’ve stopped everything for weeks to study the paper until he could give a better answer and seem smart.
Instead, he continued to focus on creating a domestic source of rubber, saving the phonograph economy, and establishing a succession plan for his company — all problems that he could actually solve.
A lawyer was grilling Henry Ford on the witness stand with random facts in an attempt to make him look uneducated.
“Who was Benedict Arnold?”
“How many soldiers did the British send over to America to put down the Rebellion of 1776?”
Ford finally snapped and said,
“WHY should I clutter up my mind with general knowledge, for the purpose of being able to answer questions, when I have men around me who can supply any knowledge I require?”
In real life
We can snicker at that reporter and lawyer for missing the plot.
Yet we’re the ones who refuse to apply for a job until we have 3 more portfolio pieces … even though no one cares about your portfolio.
We refuse to launch our app on Product Hunt until it’s visually perfect … even though it solves user problems better than the incumbent.
We refuse to touch AWS before getting certified …even though no one asked us to be certified.
Root cause
Our early education followed the rhythms of time.
A 10-week quarter.
12 grades before high school graduation.
4 years of undergrad.
2 more years for the master’s.
Since these slots were pre-allocated, the task was to learn as much as possible and outperform others on the test.
We hoarded knowledge to outperform when we should’ve been using knowledge to help.
You might’ve learned enough about multiplication after 3 weeks of arithmetic to create a calculator app.
The app would’ve worked, but because you didn’t memorize the time tables, you would’ve only gotten a 70/100 on the test. So you put your creation on hold and kept learning memorizing instead.
This pattern of continuing to learn past the point of usefulness is what causes us engineers to feel like we’re never ready.
It’s why we force ourselves to finish the 200-page data structure book even though we got what we needed on page 20.
It’s why we optimize for performance before a user ever notices the lag
It’s why we avoid the hard problems at work because we don’t know how to solve them (yet).
The fix
Stop thinking in terms of exam scores (0-100).
Start thinking in terms of problems solved (Solved / Not solved).
Except there’s a catch:
You have to start with other people’s problems.
Once you’ve successfully solved someone’s problem, then you can ship it.
“But what if I don’t know enough to solve the problem?”
Then take a course or read a book….but stop once you have enough knowledge to solve the problem.
The task isn’t completing the course with a high grade.
The task is solving someone else’s problem.
An English student only needs to understand Macbeth enough to write a thesis that makes the teacher go, “Huh, interesting.”
A Junior Developer only needs to code well enough to close the issue assigned to them.
The Principal Architect only needs to know enough about distributed system design to write a doc for the team to start prototyping.
Final words
Whatever you want in life, you’ll get it faster by giving more.
Once you realize that the only thing stopping you from getting what you want is a bunch of other people’s problems, it’ll feel silly to delay the fix in the pursuit of obscure knowledge.
No one will ever say, “Your app would solve my problem perfectly, but I don’t think you understand Dijkstra’s algorithm, so I’m going to pass.”
“But I like learning.”
If amassing knowledge beyond the point of utility is fun, and you have time, then have fun.
But don’t trick yourself: maxing out your knowledge doesn’t automatically help others.
Unfortunately, productivity really is this simple:
Just help people.
For a deep-dive on how to set up a system to help others, see my latest video: