Knowledge is "the booby prize" unless...

The growth and self improvement courses I was in would typically make statements like "Understanding is the booby prize", though it made no sense to me.  (The exact quote was one that Werner Erhard used in EST.  See Lawrence Platt's work.  I believe John Handley used to include it in his LifeSpring workshops.)

Notice that thinking one understands because one has gathered lots of information and even thought something through may still leave one short of being able to get a desired result from it.

The ultimate is that we want to be able to create the desired results we want in life.  Otherwise, "understanding" will leave you no better off.  

Some will say that is not true that learning for learning sake makes no sense as some will experience the pleasure of "mental masturbation" and maybe some pleasure in learning.  But notice that that experience comes from the emission of chemicals that are pleasurable because "Lennie" (our primitive brain) "thinks" it is a form of enabling its owner to get better results in life, which is, of course, something that will generate good chemicals themselves.   Sure, good chemicals are good to feel, but perhaps this is not better (or at least not much better) than eating an ice cream cone or maybe just thinking 'more well' of yourself despite having no sound basis for it.  

Maybe this is similar to The Rat Pressing The Dopamine Lever, getting nowhere and..., but not to that degree!  (Read  Living Life As A Rat Pressing The Dopamine Lever - Wasting Our Lives - A Huge Pity!)

We evolved  "for" one basic thing.  (You should know this, in order to understand all of our motivations.) 

Ken Blanchard, in Know Can Do (i.e. "no can do"), nails down how we madly, passionately accumulate information, becoming knowledge gatherers - and then we go home from our seminars without sufficient time to reap the harvest!!!!!  Yikes!  Knowledge (and undersstanding) is then the booby prize as it wins us nothing out there in the real world where the prize is desired results, desired effects. 

So that long introduction leads me to the next point.  To actually get something out of a book, such as my first book (Life Value Productivity), one will find himself only getting the benefits from implementing "the practices" as action is the great connector between "sufficient knowledge" and the results we want.  Read the book (or even The Site) and do the practices and I defy you not to get greatly desired leaps forward in life - real ones, not the "quantum leap' fictions!