RE: Mind your knowledge
For me, knowledge and understanding are very different things.
As an example, I may know what I should eat and why, what exercises I should do and why - but if I don't do them, I do not actually understand.
It doesn't matter how many books one reads on surfing and how much one knows, the first time on a board, you are going to get dumped (if you can even paddle out to the waves that is).
All information is good information when considered. Sometimes it is information you can use directly, sometimes it is information you can use to avoid, sometimes it can be manipulated to do something the information was not created for.
Information is just information. It is what one does with it that is important (if anything is actually important in this world)
It is also possible that pure action need no knowledge at all. Some of the best dancers in the world, do not know enough to teach.
A useful construct I find is that of Data-information-knowledge-wisdom
ultimately it is about how it impacts your day to day decision making:
In my classes I give the following example:
DATA
I see a brown block of something on my table, it is square smells nice (all data points)
INFORMATION
putting the data points together, I can be reasonably certain that is a piece of chocolate
KNOWLEDGE
from my experience, when I ate chocolate before I liked it alot, but chocolate is energy dense (another data point)
WISDOM
Given that my goal is to lose weight, I should not eat this piece of delicious chocolate.
It is only when you incorporate information into your knowledge and experience framework and then ACT accordingly, that it becomes useful.
If the data information and knowledge are in your head but you do not make your decisions in accordance with that, all these are USELESS
Strictly defining USEFULLNESS in this case as at an individual level as something that will help YOU achieve your goals by making informed decisions that will lead to ACTIONS that get you closer to your goals.