“The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance; it is the illusion of knowledge” – Daniel Boorstin.
The Route Less Travelled
In the late 1990’s my father got an itch to start investigating. He had a decent sum of cash sitting in a savings account and he decided it was time to put his money to work. The savings account returned about 1.5% a year so any return over and above that would be a successful investment.
At the time the dot com boom was at its inception and everyone was pumping money into tech stocks. My father didn’t fully understand the stock market and its inherent risks, so instead of investing in tech stocks, he purchased 15 acres of land in an upcoming neighbourhood near Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. He never lost a dime when the dot com bubble went bust, and even after the recent downturn in the housing market, his property is currently worth 8 times what he paid for it.
She did not know any better
About a year ago a friend of mine wrote an e-Book and put it up for sale on her blog. I jokingly pointed out to her that all of the information in the e-Book was readily available on other blogs/websites for free and indexed correctly by Google. She was disappointed when I mentioned this but she left her e-Book up for sale anyway. We both assumed that it wouldn’t sell. We were wrong. The e-Book has been sold for a sum of nearly $4K in a short while.
The Lessons
Two significant Lessons:
The popular way of doing things may not always the best way. Sometimes taking action based on ignorance beats taking no action at all.
Knowledge is, no doubt, important. But occasionally what we know (or what we think we know) hinders our ability to take action and make sound judgements. We become consumed with commonly accepted practices and thus fail to innovate. We follow the herd instead of thinking for ourselves.
Doing things the same way as they have always been done is a sure way of never getting ahead. Just because other people have done things a certain way doesn’t make it right. Quite often you will find the exact opposite to be true.
Being ignorant of popular opinion is a good mindset to be in. It allows you to form your own opinions based on first-hand experience. It gives you the freedom to think and to innovate. Oddly enough, the right kind of ignorance can give you the power to succeed.
