One Only Need Know, What One Need Know, When One Need Know It
Journal Entry: Monday, December 9, 2024
One Only Need Know, What One Need Know, When One Need Know It
In an age of limitless knowledge and infinite resources, the greatest challenge isn’t finding information—it’s deciding what to focus on. The overwhelming accumulation of human wisdom, developed over centuries, is a double-edged sword: it’s empowering, but also paralyzing. For artists, this deluge can be especially daunting. How do you decide what to learn when you could learn anything?
The answer lies in simplicity. As one of my guiding sayings puts it: “One only need know, what one need know, when one need know it.” This principle offers not just a way to navigate knowledge, but a roadmap for artistic growth. Everything else you don’t need to know at the moment.
The Burden of Endless Knowledge
The world’s collective knowledge is breathtakingly vast, and for any individual, entirely impossible to absorb. While this might seem like a limitation, it’s actually liberating. You don’t need to know everything. As an artist, your role isn’t to master the entirety of art history, every technique, or every medium. Your task is to chart your own path and gather the knowledge that helps you move forward—step by step- at the time you need it.
Many people fall into the trap of accumulating information for its own sake, becoming consumed with preparation rather than action. But preparation without purpose is a detour, not progress. You only need to learn what directly contributes to the next step in your own journey.
Looking Within to Find Your Path
As an artist, your direction isn’t dictated by external trends or the vastness of available knowledge—it comes from within. What interests you? What is calling to you?
Your answers to these questions form your compass. When you identify what resonates with you, the overwhelming sea of possibilities narrows. You begin to see not the endlessness of what you could learn, but the clarity of what you need to learn.
The Next Step: A Practical Approach to Knowledge
Once you’ve identified your direction, the principle of “one need know” comes into play.
Start Walking the Path: Begin with what you already know and what excites you. As you take those first steps, you’ll naturally encounter challenges.
Identify the Problem: Each challenge you face is an opportunity to refine your focus. What specific knowledge do you need to overcome this hurdle? For instance, if you’re struggling with perspective in your drawings, then your next learning step is clear: study perspective.
Seek Focused Knowledge: This is where the wisdom of predecessors becomes invaluable. Instead of drowning in generalized knowledge, look to how others have solved the exact issue you’re currently facing. Dive deeply into the problem at hand, analyze other’s solutions, solve it, and move forward.
Repeat the Process: With each step, new challenges will arise, and the cycle begins again. Each problem informs the next layer of knowledge you need to acquire and the practice you need to engage in.
Consolidate: Over time you will develop principles and theories based on your own experiments and insights.
The Power of Problem-Driven Learning
This approach has several advantages:
Efficiency: You aren’t wasting time, attention or energy on knowledge that isn’t immediately relevant.
Clarity: Each step forward sharpens your understanding of your goals and the skills you need to achieve them.
Integration: When you need to know it is when you learn out of necessity, you internalize knowledge more effectively because it’s tied to problem solving, action and experience.
Knowledge as a Tool, Not a Burden
For artists, this mindset ensures that knowledge remains a tool, not a burden or a distraction. You don’t need to memorize the entire toolbox—just the tool that solves the problem at hand. Over time, as you solve more problems and take more steps, your repertoire based on direct experience naturally grows, shaped by your unique journey.
The Artist’s Focus
Art isn’t about knowing everything. It’s about creating, expressing, and evolving. The pursuit of endless knowledge can be a distraction from the heart of artistic practice which is direct experience. Instead of feeling pressured to learn it all, embrace the philosophy of learning as you go.
The vastness of human knowledge is both humbling and exhilarating. But as an artist, your responsibility isn’t to take it all in. It’s to look within, find your direction, and take the next step. Because when you take that step, the only knowledge you need is what gets you from here to there. The rest will reveal itself in time.
So, the question isn’t “What should I learn?” but “What do I need to know now?” The answers will always guide you forward.
“I went to the store to buy a 1 inch hole but could only find a 1 inch drill bit.”
Of course knowing is not the same as doing or mastering.