Do You Have to Have All The Answers?

Today’s guest post comes to us from Josh Hanagarne, the world’s strongest librarian. He’s earned attention from Seth Godin, Problogger and other big names. If he’s great enough for them, he’s great enough for us Please welcome Josh and enjoy the post!

Some people think they know everything. Some people think they know nothing. Usually they’re both wrong.

I’m pretty smart, I guess, but I place myself in the second group. Since you’re smart enough to be here reading Men With Pens, I’m assuming you’re in the second group as well: smart people who don’t have all the answers. Bear with me for a few paragraphs…

I’m a librarian: My job is to have answers.

Being a librarian means different things. Now, library schools need students—that’s where their money comes from. No students mean no money and no money means no faculty.

And so the universities send their brightest, best, most shrill advocates to sign you up. When the wild-eyed recruiters arrive to convince you to do a Master’s Degree in Information Science, they rant like methed-up Baptist ministers and say things like: “You’ll be the steward of democracy! Just think of it!”

This Steward of Democracy spends a lot of his days telling children to quit peeing on the library’s floors. Nobody seems to be able to find the restroom in time.

But between public urinations, my real job is to do research. I answer questions, which keeps me on my toes because you never know what questions you might get. Someone might come in and ask for a schematic of a battleship, a legal statute from Senate Bill ABC123, how much debt John Kerry has (that information is out there and Google’s not going to give it to you), or my favorite: “Where the hell’s the bathroom in this place?”

That’s a question I can seldom answer quickly enough, so I’m getting pretty good with a mop.

Now, just because I can answer most questions quickly and accurately doesn’t mean I know all the answers. Far from it. It just means I know where to look. I have access to the answers, which reside in fancy, expensive databases and dusty old archives.

Back to those two groups of people:

People who think they know nothing: The geniuses

It has been my experience that pathologically curious people who are terrified of boredom and stagnation—people who study the hardest and make the most progress—are often the ones who would tell you they don’t know everything.

In my experience, they’re right, and I include myself in this group. Please come join me. If you don’t think you know everything, it’s all up from here.

Why would someone like Einstein, Plato, or Ken Jennings (that guy who won Jeopardy for 42 days straight) claim to be ignorant of anything? How could they? Don’t they know they are geniuses?

Here’s why: The more you seek knowledge, the more aware you become of how much is out there. If you try to learn everything, you learn how much you can never know. It’s just too big a task.

You are suddenly aware that you can only learn so much before relying on other people for answers. There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s why we’re reading this blog, right? In the hopes that someone answers a question that saves us from learning on our own the hard way.

So when things are working the way they should and people behave like they ought, nobody, not even the smartest of us all, especially not the smartest of us all, should claim to know everything.

You don’t have to have the answers to every question. Unless you’re a librarian of some sort, you’re not going to be asked most questions.

But if you answer to customers, bosses, or your blog readers, you need to have the answers to their questions.

People who think they know everything: ignorant lame-os

So people who are smart know they can’t ever possibly know everything. The flip side of this is the ignorant person who thinks he knows it all but who stopped searching for answers long ago.

My beloved and skeptical Voltaire summed it up quite nicely:

“He must be very ignorant for he answers every question he is asked”

An ex-brother in law once ranted to me for an hour about why the labyrinthine Electoral College system was “totally screwed up to hell.” I’m not saying he’s right or wrong, but if he was right…he had no idea why he was right. He was just parroting something someone else said. He knew at the time it was trendy to be outraged about politics (I’m not saying that has changed), and he didn’t want to be left out of the anger-fest.

But he didn’t want to study, either. He wanted the opinion without the work to back it up. To argue without debating.

This is what the brilliant but humble Martin Luther King called “conscientious stupidity.”

In my experience, most people who think they know it all have no curiosity left and don’t want to make the effort to confront their own ignorance.

Bloggers, Writers, Entrepreneurs: At the very least, have the answers you need to have

Humans have an innate need to invest people with more credibility than they actually have. Once someone experiences some success, it’s tempting to chalk it up to his or her skills and genetics. We don’t want to hear that it’s dumb luck.

I am here to tell you that the baffling success of my blog—which got me a contract with a literary agency—has been 90% dumb luck and 10% skill and effort.

And yet, I have what I need because I can answer any question I’m going to be asked. I know my arena, my readers, and what they expect from me.

When someone asks me how to snatch a kettlebell, I can tell him how. When someone asks how to bend a nail with their bare hands or to rip a phonebook in half, I can answer that. When someone asks why they should read 1984, I’ll talk my head off until the person begs for mercy.

However large or small your audience, customer base, or fan club is, start there. Having the answers to their questions or problems is non-negotiable if you’re going to be successful. If you’re a professional, it won’t matter how successful you think you are if your customers don’t agree with you.

But they will agree with you if you can answer their questions. And they will remain your customers because you bridge the information gap.

These days, it’s easy for anyone to get their hands on 94% of the information. The top dogs are those who provide their customers with that extra 6%.

Everything else you learn is a bonus that enriches your life and bleeds into your business, blogging, and writing endeavors. Learn all you can, every day, and make sure you stay firmly rooted in the camp of know-nothing geniuses.

That’s smart.

Now about the Electoral College…

Josh Hanagarne writes at the World’s Strongest Librarian, a blog to help you get stronger, smarter, and living better. If you’re looking for advice about coping with Tourette’s Syndrome, book recommendations, buying pants when you’re 6’8”, kettlebells, fingerstyle guitar, old-time strongman training, public urination, or how to succeed with a truly unfocused blog, he’s your man.

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