Inspiration Knowledge Experience

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There is a delicate balance between inspiration, knowledge, and experience. Having too much of one at the expense of another creates a lack of potential and limits what we are capable of.

PS: here is a more in-depth article on Personal Development.

To define our terms:

Inspiration is the act of growing our minds and what we believe is possible.
Knowledge is a theoretical understanding of what should work and why.
Experience is a practical understanding of what was tried based on our knowledge and what resulted.

To find an optimal balance, we must first have adequate inspiration. This comes from having a vision of what we believe is possible and what we want to achieve. A great way to increase our inspiration and open our minds to what is possible is by reading various books and studying incredible feats of invention, engineering, and art.

It always seems impossible until it’s done.

— Nelson Mandela

With sufficient inspiration, we can effectively increase our knowledge. Knowledge is specific and is directly related to the problem we are trying to solve. Where inspiration is looking at and enjoying beautiful architecture, knowledge is reading the textbooks and learning the required skills to build the buildings.

The final piece of the triad is experience. And experience is a direct result of action. If we spend our life gaining inspiration and knowledge but do not apply it, we will lack experience. Without this critical piece, our knowledge will quickly disappear, taking even inspiration with it. To gain experience, we need to apply the knowledge gained from reading and learning. Most importantly we need to understand where the theoretical limitations intersect the practical limitations.

The cycle of inspiration, knowledge, and experience is never-ending.

We want to increase our inspiration and what we believe is possible. With this greater inspiration, we can increase our knowledge by learning from someone who has already been there and done that (don’t reinvent the wheel, as they say). And with a greater base of knowledge, we can take action, gain experience and solve new and more interesting problems.

The essential part is to not stop here but to start the cycle over. By continuously growing, we can unlock incredible opportunities for ourselves. We can start small and constantly dream, learn, and act in ever larger and deeper circles.

A person with all inspiration and no knowledge or experience is a lousy entrepreneur.
A person with all knowledge and no inspiration or experience is a lousy teacher.
A person with all experience and no inspiration or knowledge is a hard-working technician.
But a person with inspiration, knowledge, and experience is unstoppable.