The 'knowledge vs application' gap

• Published: 2023-03-27 18:49
• Updated: 2023-03-27 20:23

A friend, recently promoted to a new leading job position, didn't feel comfy with his new situation yet. How should he, his experience in such a role was neglegible. Being a book savy guy, he started reading. And read book after book. Did more research, found tons of videos on the subject. Eventually spending weeks of taking in information.

However, it's one thing to know stuff vs having made the experience it actually works. The latter creates confidence in one's actions. Unfortunately, he lacked the confidence to take the first step to actually applying what he learned. So he felt like an impostor, wasting his time - waiting to be caught in the act.

Sounds familiar?

I've been there, too in music production. Watching video after video about any given topic. Thinking “Oh, I know this now, cool”. Then, as time went by, I met a situation in which the knowledge I digested earlier should have allowed me handle the situation at hands differently. Yet, it didn't. Why?

Weeks had passed since I took in all the information that should have helped me. However, the knowledge that didn't get applied again and again and thus transferred into muscle memory, simply didn't pop up in the situation where I needed it to.

Moreso, very often I noticed that external factors like time constraints mounted some pressure. Noticing, that I should have taken a different route to begin with to not end up struggling with the situation at hand, just made it more frustrating.

Meaning: in order to navigate out of the current issue, I had to invest time to revert the mistakes I made along the way earlier. How often did I really do that? Erm. Well.

I eventually figured out I just wasted a lot of time accumulating knowledge leading to frustration in one way or another. Along with the impression of having created a sort of mental debt.