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6
Sep
2017
Last spring, I planted some beans in my garden. I don't know how many, but around 100 beans. Exactly according to the instructions, three inches apart. Four of the beans came up. Just four.
So, about two weeks later, I tried again. I planted another package of beans. About 90, this time. Two more beans came up. Just two.
Total bean plants, six.
But oh my, how those six beans grew.
I estimate, in hindsight, that I harvested around 15 gallons of beans before I pulled those six plants up by the roots.
Looking back, I'm grateful now that only six seeds germinated. We'd have been overrun if they had all grown. Perhaps those seeds knew better than I did how much growth to anticipate.
Disturbing thought – are beans smarter than I am?
Categories: Soft Edges
Tags: growth, Beans, expectations
17
May
Donald Rumsfeld made one memorable quotation during his tenure as G.W. Bush's Secretary of Defense: “There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know.”
In The Book of Awesome, Neil Pasricha translated Rumsfeld’s abstract theorizing into an everyday context -- learning to drive a car.
First, we don't know what we don't know. We think that driving will be easy.
Second. we discover how much we don’t know. My first driving lesson, for example, was in an ancient Austin with barely 20 horsepower. But when I dropped the clutch, a ton of metal crow-hopped around a field. I had no idea power could be so uncontrollable....
Tags: Rumsfeld, knowledge, growth, learning