You don’t even know what you don’t know.

Ever had a flat tire? Maybe, maybe not, but eventually most people are going to run into this problem. Now depending on the person, every person is likely to fall into one of two categories.

Either A: They don’t know how to change a tire,

Or B: They do.

Regardless of which person you might be in this situation, it could be worse.

What if you didn’t even know you had a flat? I’ve personally seen this on the road before, while driving down from Fairfax VA to Tampa FL. An eighteen-wheeler was rolling down Interstate 75 with all 18 of its wheels and only 17 tires, sparks flying. The driver was completely unaware of what was going on.

It’s hard to imagine any trucker that wouldn’t know how to change a tire, but in this case, it was likely that the person zipping down the freeway while digging an impressive groove into the NC stretch of I-75 had no idea one of the inner wheels had lost a tire. How could they know? Unless they caught a glimpse of the sparks under the trailer or perhaps a glimpse of me waving at them like an idiot trying to mime a flat tire, or some other indication that something was awry, how could they know?

To some degree everyone on the planet is like the trucker missing a tire, cruising along blissfully unaware that there’s something that needs or could use their attention. What’s even more frustrating about being in this situation is that, like in the case of the trucker, many times if we had only known about the issue, we already have the skills to handle the job easily.

If we think about the problem logically, we find that there are four states of perception:

· There are known knowns, that is to say, there are things that we know that we know, the comfort zone, the job you’ve had for a while, the trick you can do on a bike, etcetera.

· Then there are known unknowns, things we know that we don’t know. Maybe you’re that person who knows they have a flat but can’t change it, or who has heard of eggs benedict but doesn’t know how to make it. In today’s world this isn’t a bad spot to be in at all, identifying a problem will allow you to either solve it or find someone who can.

· Perhaps most frustrating are the unknown knowns. These are items that if only they were on our radar, we’d know exactly how to solve them. Maybe you left the gas cap open or you’re driving with your blinker on. Or it’s that little thing that’s been annoying your partner that you just didn’t know you were doing. Something you didn’t realize was important to someone else, but it was.

· And then there are also unknown unknowns, this is something like the fog in front of you down the road, these are the things that we don’t know that we don’t know. Unfortunately, they make up the vast majority of the ‘things’ we could possibly know. It’s just unlimited potential things that can crop up…. heavy right?

In today’s interconnected world with information seemingly at our beck and call it’s easy to fall victim to this mindset that “I know everything I need to know and if I don’t, I can just look it up.” How’s a person supposed to handle being in that third or fourth unsatisfactory situation where they’re completely ignorant that there’s even a thing to be known? Will they ever have an opportunity to implement this as of yet un-googled knowledge? This un-apologized for offense? I’ve thought of a few things that might help:

Constantly seek knowledge.

This entire concept just reiterates the importance of lifelong curiosity. Knowing things for the sake of knowledge, regardless of if one can understand what for or why they might need it right now. One thing that comes to mind is the high school trope “When am I ever going to need this?” Well, you might not need it at all to solve a specific problem but who knows what problems this allegedly useless knowledge might help you at least identify in the future.

Listen to people like they know something that you don’t.

As I mentioned before I find it easy with today’s technology to find oneself falling victim to this idea that all relevant information is identified whether its known or not, and that there are no unknown unknowns. Take for example the screeching contests that constitute civil discourse in the nation. It seems that neither side thinks that the other could have thought of anything the they hadn’t already thought of first. About half the time they can’t even agree on what they’re “debating” about. The average online debater thinks they have 100% of their ducks accounted for, even if they may not be in a row yet. This is not the way. In our romantic relationships, business dealings, interactions online, and pretty much any other situation, we should approach the table with the permanent grain of salt. Knowing that there are so many things left to the unknown there is a huge incentive to extract as much knowledge from our fellow human beings as possible. Be that about love, our behavior, their business needs, or their points of view.

Fail so you can succeed.

I imagine thinking about the world this way can give some people anxiety, as it did to me when I began to realize how little the monoliths in my life knew for certain. My parents, my heroes, my teachers. etc. It can almost make a person want to clam up and hide. But not knowing the unknowns is all the more reason to push boundaries.

For example, in the game of poker and particularly in poker games amongst friends or familiar opponents, players quickly develop a hyper competitive ‘meta-game’, and as a new player one is likely to be ignorant of this. A meta-game is an unspoken set of strategies and patterns that become dominant in any given game. The “meta”, as it’s called, is constantly evolving and changing as players find more effective ways to beat one another. You get up and go play with a different group of players, you get a different meta. An example of a few meta changes might be that advanced players use new techniques that are quickly copied by others, new players at the table can change the way existing players react to certain things, or the meta game completely degenerates due to one player playing in a completely unanticipated fashion. In order to understand the meta and the fastest and easiest way to get oneself to winning consistently isn’t to train in isolation until you’re so good that you’ll never lose a game, that’s impossible. The actual optimal strategy for winning as fast as you can is to go out and dip your toes in enough times you begin to understand what works and what doesn’t work in the specific situations you find yourself in and the different metas you experience. I’ve come to believe this is an accurate representation of how real life works too.

And finally,

Perhaps most importantly, considering the exploration of the “If I had only known…” concept that we’ve explored in this article, enjoy today as there may not be a tomorrow. Who knows what’s around the corner? It could be everything you’ve ever dreamed of, or it could be just another day. What we can say for certain is that the future is waiting for us to create it, hopefully a little more thoughtfully with the knowledge that we don’t know it all.