Quotes About Knowledge

2012 McKinsey study found that the average knowledge worker now spends more than 60 percent of the workweek engaged in electronic communication and Internet searching, with close to 30 percent of a worker's time dedicated to reading and answering e-mail alone.

the average knowledge worker now spends more than 60 percent of the workweek engaged in electronic communication and Internet searching, with close to 30 percent of a worker's time dedicated to reading and answering e-mail alone.

The implication of these findings is clear. In work (and especially knowledge work), to increase the time you spend in a state of depth is to leverage the complex machinery of the human brain in a way that for several different neurological reasons maximizes the meaning and satisfaction you'll associate with your working life.

In an age of network tools, in other words, knowledge workers increasingly replace deep work with the shallow alternative—constantly sending and receiving e-mail messages like human network routers, with frequent breaks for quick hits of distraction.

It follows that to embrace deep work in your own career, and to direct it toward cultivating your skill, is an effort that can transform a knowledge work job from a distracted, draining obligation into something satisfying—a portal to a world full of shining, wondrous things.

regularly read and understand the cutting-edge results in my field.

Every week, I expose myself to something new about my field. I can read a paper, attend a talk, or schedule a meeting. To ensure that I really understand the new idea, I require myself to add a summary, in my own words, to my growing "research bible

A well-known journalist recently told me that following a breaking story on Twitter gives him the sense that he's receiving lots of information, but that in his experience, waiting until the next morning to read the article about the story in the Washington Post almost always leaves him more informed.

Another issue muddying the connection between depth and meaning in knowledge work is the cacophony of voices attempting to convince knowledge workers to spend more time engaged in shallow activities.

Knowledge workers, I'm arguing, are tending toward increasingly visible busyness because they lack a better way to demonstrate their value. Let's give this tendency a name. Busyness as Proxy for Productivity:

Getting involved with research early is like drinking an elixir of success. It's one of the most commonly overlooked and effective secrets for winning at college. Don't let this opportunity pass you by.

Let's assume you're a knowledge worker, which is a field without a clear training philosophy. If you can figure out how to integrate deliberate practice into your own life, you have the possibility of blowing past your peers in your value, as you'll likely be alone in your dedication to systematically getting better. That is, deliberate practice might provide the key to quickly becoming so good they can't ignore you.

But this doesn't matter, as the specifics of the work are irrelevant. The meaning uncovered by such efforts is due to the skill and appreciation inherent in craftsmanship—not the outcomes of their work. Put another way, a wooden wheel is not noble, but its shaping can be. The same applies to knowledge work. You don't need a rarified job; you need instead a rarified approach to your work.

attention" to uncover the truth latent in each. In other words, he teaches: To learn requires intense concentration.

Today, we have more information than ever, but less wisdom; more talk, but less listening; more things in the superficial showroom (celebrities are a good example), and less in the intellectual storeroom (that would be knowledge).

The fact that you cannot understand it does not mean that it doesn't exist.

It is the greatest truth of our age: Information is not knowledge.

Both Kreizler and I had seen all this before, but familiarity did not breed acceptance.

I believe half of a writer's job is to, really, take you to another world and give you a view of things, information about another world that entertains you and informs you.

Mega biblion, mega kakon (Big book, big evil)

Excessive knowledge is an unwieldy ill; a man with a loose tongue is indeed a child with a knife.

We do not need more intellectual power; we need more moral power. We do not need more knowledge; we need more character. We do not need more government; we need more culture. We do not need more law; we need more religion. We do not need more of the things that are seen; we need more of the things that are unseen

Well, they're going to elect that Superman Hoover, and he's going to have some trouble. He's going to have to spend money, but it won't be enough. Then the Democrats will come in. But they don't know anything about money. [To his Secret Service man, Edmund Starling]

It is characteristic of the unlearned that they are forever proposing something which is old, and because it has recently come to their own attention, supposing it to be new.