by Silver66, TF Metals Report:
Our week-long series of guest posts continues today with this latest installment from Silver66. His columns have always been well-received and I’m confident you’ll enjoy today’s post, too.
The Discipline of Distance
by, Silver66
Every morning brings a fresh reason to be concerned.
Before breakfast we can learn that a war has escalated, an indebted government has announced another spending package, a central bank has hinted at a policy change, and commentators are already debating what it all means. By the time the day is underway, countless voices are explaining why everything has changed.
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Some of those concerns are justified. History gives us plenty of reasons to be skeptical of governments, financial institutions, and the promises of those in power. Markets are manipulated. Currencies can be debased. Technology has a habit of disrupting lives long before society figures out how to adapt.
Those realities deserve our attention.
Whether they deserve to occupy our attention is another matter.
More than twenty-five years ago, entrepreneur Dan Sullivan introduced me to an idea that has stayed with me ever since. He described four levels of understanding: data, information, knowledge, and wisdom.
At first I appreciated it because it neatly organized how people learn. Over time I came to see something else. It explains why we have access to more information than any generation before us, yet often seem to possess less perspective.
Data tells us what happened.
Information puts those facts into context.
Knowledge begins to recognize patterns.
The first three can now be delivered almost instantly.
Wisdom insists on something the others do not.
It insists on time.
Not because time changes the facts.
More often, it changes us.
If oil defined much of the twentieth century, attention may prove to be the scarce resource of the twenty-first. News organizations compete for it. Advertisers buy it. Political movements try to direct it. Social media measures it because attention has become the gateway to influence.
No conspiracy is required to explain this. Incentives usually explain human behaviour surprisingly well.
Outrage has always been good for business. Fear isn’t far behind. Certainty may be the most seductive of all because it relieves us of the discomfort of ambiguity.
I’ve begun to wonder whether we’ve mistaken consuming information for thinking.
I learned what that looked like years ago while coaching competitive hockey.
Around our team it became known simply as The 24-Hour Rule. If a parent wanted to discuss ice time, line combinations, or why his son hadn’t played on the power play, he had to wait until the following day.
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