Life isn’t a game show
First, let’s define.
Jeopardy knowledge: Knowledge that works for a game show yet has no value in the real world.
With information without context being so readily available, it’s easy to attain jeopardy knowledge.
I used to be good at Jeopardy knowledge.
It’s great at dinner parties. People think you are smart because you know the year Martin Luther King Jr. did the “I Have a Dream” speech. However, when it comes to creating work that matters, it’s far more important to know the context, even if you didn’t know the work by name.
Jeopardy knowledge doesn’t bleed into your ideas and helps you set direction.
Getting rid of it, and replacing it with something “real” is a force multiplier.
This month’s theme ties into “direction.”
At the end of last year, I wrote a newsletter highlighting the “three tenets of leadership.” Each month, I take a topic related to one of the three tenets and write about my ideas and experience around the topic.
Reread candidate
Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance – If there is someone who is anti-Jeopardy knowledge it would be Elon Musk. He does his research around his big ideas to gather context. If he talks about something, you can be sure he knows enough about it to ask the right questions.
From the desk of Adam Thomas 