"You can only learn what you almost already know." A boss said those words to me early in my career. Over and over again, I have found revelation is a matter of taking that last step from almost knowing a thing to having my first grasp on it.
To understand, then, I need to first put myself in a position to have revelations. For me, this positioning means studying topics I care about from multiple angles and authors.
I am reminded of the maxim that the secret to success is putting oneself in a position to be lucky—ideally, multiple opportunities to let luck happen. Many of my contemporaries view this as hitting the big time with career or financial success. I have found it to matter in areas of knowledge too. By doing reading, I am in a better position to have a revelation in a meeting. By taking more meetings with intelligent people, I can understand the theory from a book.
Second, I need to be patient with research and knowledge that is not yet actionable or revelatory. If I "almost already know" many things, that means I have put time and energy into not knowing. I need to let time be my ally in converting this under-processed information into wisdom.
Third, I have to listen. Just running an audiobook is no guarantee that I am paying attention. If I find my mind is wandering, I have learned to shut off the book. Thus, there is no almost-knowledge in inattention.
In conversations, I listen to others well. I am working on listening to myself. Often my words are a readback of the other person's perspective or combined with something useful from my other knowledge gathering. The words that might be only moderately helpful to my interlocutor could be beneficial to me!
Finally, I find shipping helps a great deal. The action of shipping surfaces what is most valuable. Donald Norman discusses "knowledge in the world" in his classic, The Design of Everyday Things. There is another layer beneath the evident knowledge: the pattern underneath. By bending the world to my will by shipping, I peel back the surface knowledge to the layer beneath. Some of this I don't quite understand at the time and becomes context. Sometimes the puzzle fits together, and I am in a position to act.
Shipping can take many forms, but they all involve manifesting knowledge in a form exposed to other people. "Real artists ship." The difference between shipping and tinkering is that I cannot live with the almost-known knowledge swimming in my head. It has to express in solid form, however imperfect that might be.
And so it is with this essay. The more I know, the more I am humbled by the enormity of what there is to be known. I feel ever further behind in my quest to understand and do better by my people. But I take solace that knowledge is not Athena, springing fully-formed from the skull of Zeus. Knowledge is a child. It needs nurture without expectation or prediction of what it will be. Instead, it waits for the opportunity - conversation, reading, shipping, or listening to my voice - to become known.