Secret #10: Knowing is Easy; Doing is Hard
We listed our 10 Secrets to Extraordinary Career Success recently and promised to examine each in depth. We said:
10. Knowledge is power. When Francis Bacon stated “For knowledge itself is power” [Meditationes Sacrae 1597], he didn’t mean that knowing alone is enough. Never in the history of the world has so much information been so easily available to so many as it is today. Yet knowledge alone doesn’t accomplish anything. Knowledge is like the electricity in the power outlet. Until an informed user plugs in using the right equipment, nothing happens. By all legal means, gather knowledge. But knowledge is the first thing, not the only thing you need.
In 1597, acquiring knowledge was far from easy. There were few books, no viable methods of quick communication, and no way to identify experts who might know the answers to questions we might raise. Back then, the more knowledge one possessed, the better.
Today, we have access to too much information. We experience choice fatigue from the volumes of material available in every conceivable format. We need quick and easy answers from knowledgeable experts we can trust. Our challenge is to synthesize available data and put it to some good use.
Lawyers are particularly prone to paralysis by analysis. We are risk analyzers and we seek to avoid every identifiable risk. These skills often prevent us from doing anything of value. Simply watching a work-out video won’t give you abs of steel. Knowing how to take a deposition doesn’t produce a usable transcript.
Similarly, knowing what you need to do at every stage of your developing legal career is not enough, by itself, to create and sustain that career.
Precise, specific information is essential to extraordinary performance and technique matters. Tiger Woods has perfected his golf technique by thousands of hours of practice, not by acquiring more knowledge alone. To develop an extraordinary legal career, we must actually roll up our sleeves and get into the work of creating one. Yes, we need to know precisely what we need now. And then, we need to use it.
Secret #10 that lawyers with extraordinary careers know is the formula for success: try, fail, evaluate, adjust, try again, fail better.
