The Unknown Unknowns, What I Wish I Knew

By Warren Wong

Former United States Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, introduced the concept of the unknown unknowns.

He famously said, “Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”

The unknown unknowns have an inconspicuous way of influencing our lives. Things where if we knew, could positively benefit our lives like the secrets to wealth creation or negatively affect us like poor relationship management. 

A passing conversation about money or an epiphany moment after hitting rock bottom could turn an unknown unknown to a known unknown. It is during this moment, we have the power to learn and reconcile what we didn’t know.

If we leave it to chance, unknown unknowns may remain unknowns forever, but if we actively seek them out, we can make discoveries that can improve our lives and wellbeing.

Why Should I Care

A common question is, “why should I care?”. The answer is in a feeling. Have you ever discovered something that blew your mind? It could be something innocuous as a conversation with a stranger that contradicts your pre-existing beliefs. 

The conversation opened up a new perspective. The kind that inspires an “aha” moment. We are after the elusive “aha” moment that has the power to transform the way we think and better our lives. 

Whether it’s our relationships, careers, or personal finances, there are unknown unknowns that if made known, can positively impact our lives. 

If one grew up with financially savvy parents, imagine the financial education they could provide their children in wealth building, and good financial habits. 

If you’re like the rest of us, where neither your education system nor parents knew much about personal finances, then you wouldn’t know what you didn’t know, which hurts your chances of becoming wealthy yourself.

Bridging this gap is important not only for the apparent benefits, but from prevention of debilitating mistakes. If the parents were instead horrible with money, high risk taking individuals, where dad was a compulsive hot stock tip weekend warrior, and mom a slot machine addict, how different would one’s upbringing be?

The child’s money psychology might be completely warped. They would probably be distrustful of banks, adverse to healthy risk, and the idea of investing would be swapped with expensive weekends out partying, and other live fast, die young shenanigans. 

I’m not here to blame parents for all the weird twisted things they may or may not have inflicted upon us, but it is our responsibility to take care of them. 

Related Article: Why You Shouldn’t Care What Your Parents Think

The negative consequences of not knowing unknown unknowns is time and life energy wasted going down the wrong path or a mediocre path that isn’t for you.

If you didn’t know that happiness is a choice, then you might fill your days and years chasing external metrics of success like fame, status, and money, all the while wondering why you aren’t any happier. 

Or you may have a distorted notion of how relationships work, never understanding that it requires communication and compromise, thus never enjoying deep relationships. 

What you don’t know, can hurt you. You just don’t know that it’s hurting you.

Discovering Unknown Unknowns

How do we discover more unknown unknowns? There may be many reasons why they are unknown to us: no one taught us, the timing wasn’t right, or we weren’t born in an environment that fostered it. But, awareness that we can discover them, empowers us to try. Here are some practical ways to start uncovering more unknown unknowns.

Reading more is an underrated way to uncover novel ideas. Non-fiction books are going to work better than fiction. Try reading topics you know little about. There is no shame with not completing books. Sometimes I find myself skimming through the fluff, which many authors add to meet word count goals, in order to get to the good stuff. 

Read books on behavioral psychology, relationships, mental models, consciousness, happiness. Whatever excites or scares you is an opportunity to discover something novel. And it doesn’t have to be just books, it could be blogs, manuscripts, or Reddit posts. While on your reading journey, be on the lookout for ideas that you can apply to your life.

Over the years I have had thousands of conversations with strangers I met while traveling, working, or at a local gathering. A simple conversation can be life changing when you have enough of them.

I’ve had conversations that taught me unique ways to improve my quality of life like geo-arbitrage, location independence, and behavioral psychology.

If you’re more of an introvert, I recommend podcasts. There are deep dive conversations on topics ranging from military history to happiness. Many have applicable insights to daily life. 

Seek out mentors in areas you wish to level up in. If you are trying to become a better writer, seek out someone who you deem is a little ahead of you on their journey. Although a well-established author is great, sometimes they can be too disengaged from where you’re at in your journey to provide meaningful advice. Plus, they are hard to track down.

A mentor can provide new insight. Sometimes all it takes is a nudge in a different direction or some positive feedback that can improve the quality of your craft by many folds.

Think outside the box. Challenge yourself to think of novel approaches to old problems. Perhaps you’re risk averse. Try to take a bigger calculated risk. Or you have the same routine at the gym, barber, or vacation destination. Try mixing it up, and you will get different results. 

Outside the box thinking can be applied to every facet of your life. Evaluate your relationships, personal finances, and career to see if there are new ideas to old problems you haven’t considered.

Be observant. This requires us to be present in order to notice all the things that are going on around us. You’d be surprised how often we are zooming by life, trapped in our own minds, with a cassette tape playing the same annoying thoughts that distract us from the opportunities all around us. 

Notice how people live, their habits, where they frequent. Listen to the things people say, common complaints, well wishes, and more importantly, what they do and fail to do. Herein lies many truths about life, the difference between actual human behavior and well intentions.

Seek new experiences. New experiences have the power to transform our perspective of the world. Whether that is a solo backpacking trip across Europe or pursuing a childhood hobby of baking, both can open new channels of thinking and add color to our day to day lives. 

Through these experiences they can help us discover new unknown unknowns, whether that’s realizing a childhood passion might be a legitimate career or finding ourselves more than capable to tackle new challenges with our newfound sense of optimism. 

Some Unknown Unknowns

There are things I wished someone taught me, but didn’t, that could have given me a big advantage in life. Whether that’s how to handle nuanced relationship woes, finding true happiness, or navigating the dreaded career ladder. 

In my opinion there are many unknown unknowns in our financial education. Financial education is sorely lacking in our education system, and often not taught at home either. Money talk often has a stigma attached to it. Not exactly a dinner table conversation. Yet, money plays a large part in our lives.

Compounding is a concept that most of us weren’t taught in school, especially not in the money sense. Neither was leverage and the ability to properly use it to increase returns on investments. And perhaps the biggest lesson I learned was the power of time.

Warren Buffet, perhaps the most well known investor of our time, has been in the stock market for 80 years, with a majority of his wealth accumulated in the last 30 years, due to the power of compound interest. If someone taught me to invest earlier, imagine how much freedom I would be afforded now.

And what about happiness? Many of us strive for money, fame, and status because we mistakenly believe it will lead to happiness. Isn’t that what we’re told? Perhaps another big gotcha moment that flipped my world upside down was that money doesn’t equate to happiness. Sure, money can certainly give us moments of temporary happiness, but not the lasting kind.

Happiness is not a destination, but an everyday choice. The old me glorified the grind, socking away money for a rainy day, and purchasing things to fill a missing part of me.

Yet, I wasn’t any happier than when I started. It was a scary realization that forced me to rethink my definition of success and happiness. What makes me truly happy when money, fame, and status isn’t the answer?

And what about finding a partner? Many of us are hyper focused on looks, personality, money, and shared interests in a long term partner, however, the relationship statistics show what makes a partnership last is quite contrary to that.

Indicators of long term success in relationships are kindness, loyalty, communication, and growth mindset. Boy, did I have it all wrong or maybe a part of me knew that already deep down. 

And what about leverage? The concept of leverage was born from using a lever to move a heavy object. If you have a lever, it gives you a bigger advantage than using your muscles. That is, it gives you leverage. This concept applies to many things, but has significant applications in business. 

In our modern age, with the advent of technology, social media platforms, and code, there has never been a time where permissionless leverage has been highest. 

We see the rise of Youtube and Instagram influencers reaching millions on a platform that largely remains free to use. Developers are writing complex algorithms that power these platforms that influence billions across the world. It’s a marvelous time to be alive.

Leverage has produced novel ideas of how we work, play, date, make friends, and live. Alternative lifestyles, tiny living, digital nomadism, geo-arbitrage, location independence, online dating are just some of the byproducts.

Each of them has the power to uniquely influence our lives.

Conclusion

If we look around us, there are many unknown unknowns that have yet to be discovered in our own lives and the world. We are barely scratching the surface.

The lesson here today is to bring awareness that there are ideas out there we have yet to discover, that we wished someone had taught us, but didn’t.

Armed with knowledge of unknown unknowns, we can be more aware in our day to day lives to seek them out. Whether that is learning something new, or breaking old routines, discovering unknown unknowns has the ability to transform our lives positively.