Labor Under Correct Knowledge
In this life we should always be seeking to learn. We should try to get from the day and not just get through the day. I believe that we should be looking for the most effect means for accomplishing the things that we want to accomplish. I mean, if you can get a task done in 30 minutes or 30 hours which one would you choose? Most of us would probably choose 30 minutes. But in practice, most of us choose 30 hours. This is because we don’t even know the rules (knowledge) to the game we happen to be playing at that time.
I shared an analogy with a friend of mine one day because in a conversation it was brought up that you couldn’t win if you didn’t know how to play by the rules. This idea of playing by the rules was in whatever undertaking you were apart of.
You can look at it this way, you could be the greatest poker player in the world. You could spot a Royal Flush from a mile away. You can pick apart all of your other opponents tells to know if you hold ’em or fold ‘em. But if I challenged you to a game of bid whist, That would mean that even if I was the laziest person you knew, I could beat you in an officiated game of basketball if I just played by the rules. I could walk down the court and take easy shots all day without fear of you scoring at all because you would continually violate the rules and give me back the ball. Or you would inevitably foul and give me back the ball. In any case we can all agree that if you don’t know the rules you can never win the game.
Well there are certain rules that govern success. And if you don’t follow those rules then there is no way you can be successful long term. Sure you may be able to have short success, like throwing the ball in the hole from the opposite end of the court, but how often do you think you can get “lucky”? The true definition of luck should be Laboring Under Correct Knowledge. And if you don’t know the rules you can only labor under incorrect knowledge. This can produce some results but if we want to really get it right you have to know the rules.
To give another example, most people that I run into on a daily basis have no idea the difference between assets and liabilities when it comes to finances. In the beginning I didn’t either. I also didn’t understand, because I didn’t know the rules, that whether something is an asset or a liability can change daily. Take the conventional wisdom of you house being your largest asset, one of my book mentors takes a different approach on that. He says this “Assets feed you, liabilities eat you.” In this “new” wisdom your home would be an asset if and only if you are receiving money from it. Until then, it is actually a liability to you because if you lose your job or have to cut back your hours guess what, that bill doesn’t go away. The minute you rent your home out for more than the expenses or you sell the home for more than the mortgage, it becomes an asset. Now I know people say it is an asset because you can borrow against it and cash out equity and so forth but think about it. Every month you have to pay on that asset to receive no income in return unless you sell that asset. Does this sound like your own idea of a true asset? This is what I mean by knowing the rules so you can win at the game.
Outside of money, there are rules all over. Think about what it takes to lose body weight. The basic rule is that you must burn more calories than you consume. That is, you must live in a calorie deficit. Lets look at it another way. When I was younger and didn’t know the rules, I would workout but I would also eat whenever I felt hungry. As a result, it was always difficult for me to lose weight. I also struggled with portion control. I didn’t struggle because I wanted to eat bigger portions but because I didn’t even know what the portion size was. Imagine my horror when I took a health and nutrition class in college only to find out a portion of meat was deck of cards. I don’t mean the double UNO decks, 52 cards in a box was what one portion of meat looked like. I had been playing by the wrong set of rules.
So think about your own life have you been following the rules or have you been breaking them? Did you even know what the rules were to be able to follow them? Is your life turning out the way you think it should or are you circling the drain trying to stay out of the abyss? A lot of that has to do with whether we are following the rules and making educated choices.
It’s time to know the rules, it’s time to play the game, it’s time to dream, it’s time to live!