Knowing and Understanding

It is interesting the difference between knowing and understanding.

I think we should all learn more about everything that interests and affects us, but learn it so  you understand it not just so you know it.

You can have 10 people tell you something and you can know it, the 11th person can come along and just phrase it differently and suddenly you understand it. And that makes a world of difference.

A simple example could be 1 + 1 = 2, in that scenario you can teach someone and they will know it. When you teach them they have 1 apple, and they get another apple they have 2 apples, suddenly they understand what it means.

So our goal should be to learn something until we understand it, and that could be the first time we learn about it, or it could be after studying it for 300 hours.

Something I am interested in is the Zimbabwe situation, and I know there’s a problem, I know a lot of it is caused by corruption, mismanagement and bad policies. I think everyone “knows” that. I don’t understand it though, it is on my list of things to learn about but I haven’t fully gotten into it yet.

Corruption I understand, mismanagement I understand, but bad policies I don’t. What are the bad policies and how are they causing negative effects? While I don’t think I can do very much to resolve corruption and mismanagement, maybe, I could work with the policies, find ways to not suffer the negative effects of the bad ones. Maybe not. But if I don’t understand them I will not know.

I’ve seen the same thing with reading success stories from successful people, more often than not people talk about the success part, what has worked and how it worked. Something like:

“I started a YouTube channel, I struggled with it for years and then it really took off. Now I make millions every year and only have to spend 2 or 3 hours a week working on it. You can do it too, you just need to put in the time.”

That’s fantastic, it is possible. I know you can make money on YouTube. I don’t understand how. Guides on how to create a YouTube channel also don’t usually focus on more than the technical aspects of setting it up. And often you are told to “share” your videos to generate views. That’s fine if you’re going to spend a lot of money on reaching people but no company just shares your videos with the whole world for free.

Let’s take a little look at it.

You create a YouTube channel, spend a year creating and uploading a few videos, that’s ok, you knew they would take time, you were told. Next you create a Facebook page, you share it, promote it as much as  you can. Over the course of a year (without spending too much money on it, maybe $150), you get to 10,000 likes. Fantastic, first year spent creating your YouTube channel, second year creating an audience you can reach. You share your videos on your Facebook page with your 10,000 subscribers, you earn lets say $3 per 1,000 views on YouTube, you have 10 videos, and 10,000 Facebook likes. You should instantly earn $3 x 10 per video x 10 videos which equals $300. And you only spent $150 on advertising your Facebook page. That’s 100% PROFIT! You are going to be rolling in cash.

You click “share” on your videos and post them to your Facebook page and you go to bed (you have to earn the money while you are sleeping you see). The next day you rush to your page and you see you hardly have a dozen views on each post, you check your YouTube channel, each video has a couple of views. Hmmmm maybe it just needs some time. You leave it a week. Check again. a few more post views, a couple of video views.

On your Facebook page you see a popup, it says “For $10 you could reach 1500 to 3000 people,” well your posts don’t seem to be getting viewed by themselves so you might as well “invest” $10 into getting people to see them. So you spend $10 on each post. Suddenly the counter starts ticking up, 50 views, 100 views, 300 views, 1000 VIEWS! You’ve done it!!!

You check your YouTube channel, a couple more views on a couple of  your videos. You are nowhere near the 1000 view $3 payout on any of them yet. Now you’ve spent $150 on promoting your Facebook page, and $100 on boosting your posts. You haven’t even earned your first $3 from YouTube yet.

What’s the problem here? Well there could be one, or multiple, but my theory is that it is because you “KNOW” what to do but you don’t “UNDERSTAND” it.

You need to know what to do, and understand why, when you understand why you will be able to tell if it is going to work for your channel or if you will need to change it a little. You need to understand that having 10,000 likes on Facebook does not mean 10,000 people will be reached by your posts and that it only means some people will and depending on the algorithms and reactions you get a few more people will. If the first 10 people to see it like it, maybe its a good post, if 10% of the first 100 people who see it like it, maybe it isn’t that good a post. Same number but in a different sequence. That is something that contributes towards the Facebook algorithms.

I think it applies to businesses as well. Particularly startups.

People start their businesses knowing something but not understanding it, and then they go out of business, or they struggle along until they understand it and then they make it.

With the YouTube channel example above, you could decide you’ve already sunk $250 into it, spent 2 years working on it. It does not work, or it does not work for you, and abandon it. Or you can go back to learning, learn how the algorithms work, learn what makes videos attractive to viewers, learn the best ways to get your video out there, and start understanding the whole business of being a YouTuber, find success, make millions, and tell everyone “Just keep at it and you can do it too!”

The last example will be baking. Everyone knows how to bake, just mix together some ingredients, put them in a tin, throw them in oven. All that changes is how long you leave it in the oven. 10 minutes for muffins, 15 for biscuits and 30 for a cake. Every recipe book will tell you that.

But you try it, and you’ll end up with lots of bird food and compost additions.

Turns out that without any understanding you get some varied results. For example my wife and I followed a shortbread recipe, to the letter, put all the ingredients into a bowl, mixed them together with an electric beater (the recipe said “mix ingredients”) and set the oven to 15 minutes.

Well it turns out when you are making shortbread and you use an electric beater, you end up with a nice powder. I was pretty amazed, figured baking it would give it the right shape. Well that’s something you’ve gotta try to understand the results.

So let’s all learn until we understand. There’s a big difference in knowing you shouldn’t put your finger in a electrical socket to understanding “why” not to.