Possessing knowledge isn’t that important anymore. Instead, in today’s economy, the most important skill is knowing how to access the information you need for the task at hand. In other words, you need to know how to Google really freakin’ well.
Since the internet exploded and Google’s algorithm got super intelligent, almost every answer to any question you’d ever have is answerable on the other side of a long-tail keyword.
The sweet spot is knowing enough about a subject that you know the terminology and how to Google in a way that gets you the results that you’re looking for.
My last real job, I was responsible for managing the website which involved communicating with our developer when we needed help (I didn’t know web dev at the time). But this developer was quite unresponsive and so after they didn’t respond, I decided to go to Google. And it turned out that a lot of the stuff that we were waiting on them for was pretty easy to do, just by following a five minute tutorial on YouTube.
That really kinda got my brain turning and said, what if this web development thing is more doable than it seems?
A bit later, when I started my business, I was Googling every single step of the process and I felt like a huge imposter because of it. Until I realized that all good web developers rely heavily on Google to fill in gaps in their knowledge. And then I started to Google with pride.
Of course after doing this for a few years, I no longer need to Google every step, which helps a lot. Thousands of Google searches later, I have a lot more baseline knowledge. And when I do have a gap, I can usually pretty quickly get to my answer.
Here’s the other thing. Sometimes knowing too much about a subject can be a liability, if it means that you’re so confident that you have all the answers, that you don’t check Google, that you don’t check your medical app, etc. Things change rapidly and if you are completely reliant on what’s happening in your head, you are not benefiting from this humongous collective brain that is Google and that is the internet.
So Google with pride people, learn to do it really well and you can impress people by seeming a lot smarter than you actually are. 🙂
