The inefficiency of our knowledge dispensation.

Have you ever heard the saying less is more? I once said there are more teachers on social media than students. Before I shoot, let me clarify the target of this article; there are thought-leaders out there who have paid their dues and “understand their onions” — and should be heard; this article is NOT directed at them.

This is a message to a generation that has more content than it can consume in maybe 10X its lifetime. Here is the issue: you would think with all the proliferation of knowledge in almost every subject — career, self-help, relationships, faith etc. — there would be commensurate results to show for it in the respective areas. The answer is arguable NO! I don’t think so. This is not to say there has been no progress in some quarters; however, I will argue that consumers are overwhelmed with the volume of knowledge out there and are therefore unable to efficiently select what is specifically required to improve their lives.

Below is an excerpt from the Book “The Art of Thinking Clearly by Rolf Dobelli”. [An International Best Seller]. Chapter 21; Less is more: The Paradox of choice.

“…I’ve counted and researched: my local grocery store stocks 48 varieties of yogurt, 134 types of red wine, 64 different cleaning products and a grand total of 30,000 items. Amazon, the Internet bookseller, has two million titles available. When I was young, we had three types of yogurt, three television channels, two churches, two kinds of cheese (mild or strong), one type of fish (trout) and one telephone, provided by the Swiss Post. The black box with the dial served no other purpose than making calls, and that did us just fine. In contrast, anyone who enters a phone store today runs the risk of being flattened by an avalanche of brands, models and contract options. And yet, selection is the yardstick of progress. It is what sets us apart from planned economies and the Stone Age. Yes, abundance makes you giddy, but there is a limit. When it is exceeded, a surfeit of choices destroys quality of life. The technical term for this is the paradox of choice. In his book of the same title, psychologist Barry Schwartz describes why this is so. First, a large selection leads to inner paralysis. To test this, a supermarket set up a stand where customers could sample twenty-four varieties of jelly. They could try as many as they liked and then buy them at a discount. The next day, the owners carried out the same experiment with only six flavours. The result? They sold ten times more jelly on day two. Why? With such a wide range, customers could not come to a decision, so they bought nothing. The experiment was repeated several times with different products. The results were always the same.

Second, a broader selection leads to poorer decisions…”

I remember times when having too many resources to use led me to deliver lower output when compared to times when I just had one good resource.

My mum now uses WhatsApp a lot and I have seen how she constructs her tenses, uses punctuation marks, grammar — and it's far better than some of my mates who were educated in very expensive private schools and have access to the “bottomless pit” of the internet. My late grandmother wrote impeccable letters and just like my mum, was educated in a dispensation with no Internet, Google, and expensive education. I am sure some of you can also attest to this also. They had less but became more.

Here is precisely my message — I think the proliferation of knowledge in our generation has presented two potential challenges and consequences:

1. A knowledge-inundated generation is now bewildered with excess content, and unfortunately lacking good judgment to select what exactly to focus on for growth. This may be partly responsible for the disparity between the genuine and passionate consumption of knowledge among some and the actual growth to show for it. The saddest thing is most of us don’t take stock, so we cannot measure the efficiency of our performance viz a viz knowledge consumed. We are aware that learning alone without execution is fruitless, but this article is focused on learning right in the first place and adequately. I am speaking strictly from keen personal observation.
2. Since almost everyone is now teaching (qualified or not), we now have a situation where learning has become inefficient due to the excess supply of content. The learning arena has now become cluttered with what is and is not necessary to learn. People now have a higher probability of initially consuming what they may not actually need in the name of loyalty or commitment to the teacher or just lack the good judgment to carefully select the content they should consume for their specific needs. Therefore, when the real content that would change their lives is presented, they are exhausted already or mistake it for the last “ineffective” content they consumed. [This does not include the distractions of Social media, e.g. joining multiple WhatsApp groups, where in some instances, birthday celebrants acknowledge every birthday greeting they receive from everyone who wished them Happy Birthday on the group].

We have a generation that is hearing a lot but not actually listening, so there is little or no result to show for it. The saddest part is we get excited about the learning experiences but never really take time to reflect if our lives have actually improved.

Can you imagine we have over 100 online newspaper sites to choose from or over ten (10) 24-hours news TV channels to watch, isn’t that an atomic bomb of knowledge for a generation? I strongly believe knowledge should be consumed like food — there is a specific diet for the desired outcome. Not everything posted or with a website is for you, irrespective of the source or author. Let that sink in.

Here is the moral of the article — my recommendations

1. I have a daring personal theory on the phenomenon of “consistent consumption from single/focused sources”. If you consume the right content from one or a group of related sources and are consistent, you will end up more knowledgeable and deeper than someone who relies on binging content from everywhere sporadically, as their only source. Our parents had fewer sources of knowledge but since that was all they had, they were forced to focus on what was important. This I strongly believe played a role in their better capacity in some intellectual areas than us. [Forgive their enthusiasm for conspiracy broadcasts, but we cannot be too sure who knows though, some may turn out to be true in future]. Most of our parents could help us with our difficult senior secondary school assignments but frankly speaking, most parents in this generation may be hiding behind lesson teachers.

2. Another personal theory. One of the other remote reasons why the preacher who devotionally studies only the Bible will become prolific at using it and exhibiting its tenents is because — it’s the single source of content. Therefore, that intense focus facilitates the mining of thousands of perspectives from it. In other words, if a young man picked a few carefully selected books and studied them intensively, making further references where necessary; I dare say, he will likely be more sound when compared to the average person in his generation. If that is too hard to take in, another approach would be this — consuming content systematically in series. E.g. If I want to study about World War 2, I will go on YouTube and watch almost everything available on it. I will not only come out with more knowledge about the War, I will also learn more about Economics, Politics, History, and Human Psychology among other things. This will improve my overall judgment — which is what my generation is missing.

Short video clips or tweets or ignorant comments on the timeline of equally ignorant teachers or commentators can never get you far. That is probably why we can’t find employable people to hire in spite of YouTube, Coursera, and so many other great sources of content that cannot be finished in a lifetime. Our parents who consistently consumed only one or two newspapers seemed to know a lot more than us, who have thousands of news sites and blogs to choose from. I am not even referring to their vast life experiences.

The key thing here is — focusing on a few good sources and narrowing down on a few carefully selected relevant subjects over time may get you further than just consuming anything that is presented. So for general knowledge, maybe its time to select just two online Newspapers or two 24 News channels or if you’re interested in a subject, a few related blogs or books. If you’re consistent, these sources will eventually cover everything you need to know over time. I believe it adds up.

The ability to read, meditate, and gain additional perspective — may be the secret to becoming sound on an issue. Discipline is required to remain consistent. To reiterate my point, I am also saying if you watch Prison Break three (3) times (if you can), you are likely to sound more knowledgeable than someone who has watched five (5) other series once.

Have you ever wondered how those who have read so many books are able to meditate and remember much of what they have read? Well, I have resolved to find a few fundamental books —not more than sixty (60) on diverse subjects and consume each at least three to five times over the course of a five to ten year period. Of course, I will add a few more interesting things but I may not read them more than once. My gamble is this: I am likely to find everything I may need to read to be sound in a lifetime in the sixty books. Secondly, as a result of the multiple perspectives derived from reading the books several times, I’ll develop more perspectives for critical thinking — that can be applied to other unknown parts of my knowledge journey. In other words, I may be able to better interpret the world through the focused eyes of the books I have consistently studied over time.

This may be part of the benefits of the man who reads only the 66 books in the Bible and becomes a prolific preacher. [NB: I am using the Bible as a hypothetical example and referring to just the literal knowledge derived from reading it and not the divine inspiration that is also received in the process. The popular West African secondary school Chemistry Text Book written by “Ababio” could be substituted for the Bible in the context I used it].

When you focus on a few important things, you will become more!

It is time to simplify our lives, so all the knowledge can be trapped and counted.

Emmanuel Tarfa