Tech — Work — Ramblings

by Mike Kalvas

202308141518 Be a pack rat for little facts

Be a pack rat for little facts.1

I've always valued generalization2 and breadth of learning. Being a pack rat for little facts means that you value learning and keeping knowledge and information that may or may not be useful at the time.

The proposed benefit is that all of these facts accumulate (202109060836 Knowledge should accumulate) and combine (202110231450 Combination of knowledge) over time. This will allow us to make better decisions and construct knowledge at an increasing rate (202304112152 Intellectual investment is like compound interest). 202304031221 Breadth of knowledge fuels analogy.3

This is superficially different than the 202304041100 Learn, don't memorize motto, but on closer examination, we're advocating for learning deeply, but also filing information away that we might not synthesize now, in order to aid in deep learning later. We 202308271108 Construct hooks for future knowledge by seeing and storing facts whose depth we might not yet understand.

  1. Thomas, D., & Hunt, A. (2019). The pragmatic programmer, 20th anniversary edition: Journey to mastery (Second edition) (pp. xx). Addison-Wesley. ↩

  2. Epstein, D. (2019). Range: How generalists triumph in a specialized world (1st ed.). Macmillan. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41795733-range ↩

  3. Hamming, R. W. (2020). The art of doing science and engineering: Learning to learn. Stripe Press. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53349431-the-art-of-doing-science-and-engineering ↩