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Collectors Fallacy

Source: The Collector’s Fallacy

Dwight D. Eisenhower - interesting historical tidbit related to the Collectors Fallacy and how to counter it.

As knowledge workers in the digital era, there is a tendency to gather useful stuff and feel good about it. To collect is a reward in itself. This propogates further when we become inclined to look for the next awe-inspiring, groundbreaking thought for intellectual stimulation. This results in a pile of promising books, articles, and resources that we store as bookmarks and feel good about because its the cutting edge.

This is a fallacy.

Why? Because to know about something is not the same as knowing something. Just knowing about a thing is less than superficial since know about it is merely to be certain of its existence, and nothing more. Ultimately, this is fake-knowledge and it hinders us on the road to true excellence.

To counter the fallacy, one must merge the contents, information, ideas, and thoughts of others into our own curated knowledge store. Only then, when you spend the time and energy to actually think about the information in your own context, have you learned something. Merely filing things away doesn’t lead us anywhere.

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list from [[Collectors Fallacy]] AND -"Changelog"