Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

In these short lines he touched on an intriguing differentiation between wisdom, knowledge and information. Add data at the beginning and people have proposed various models such as a hierarchy, chain, or pyramid to help understand their relationships.

It's perhaps like a skier who's experienced the data points of snow and conditions in the mountains most days of their life. They begin to observe predictable patterns and then gradually distill these into knowledge of the relationships between the weather and avalanche risk. And over a lifetime of building and applying such knowledge they may develop instincts and behaviours for predicting risk and living with the mountains that may even be called wisdom.

In an unlikely scenario, I once wrote a class paper, that somehow people still find to read, on The Data, Information, Knowledge, Wisdom Chain: The Metaphorical link (pdf). It touches on some of the subtle differences of how we think about each of these, such as how I might complain of information overload, but never of knowledge overload.

Data Information Knowledge Wisdom

Some simple wisdom from Kurt Vonnegut: notice when you’re happy.

“My uncle Alex Vonnegut, a Harvard-educated life insurance salesman who lived at 5033 North Pennsylvania Street, taught me something very important.

He said that when things were really going well we should be sure to NOTICE it. He was talking about simple occasions, not great victories: maybe drinking lemonade on a hot afternoon in the shade, or smelling the aroma of a nearby bakery; or fishing, and not caring if we catch anything or not, or hearing somebody all alone playing a piano really well in the house next door.

Uncle Alex urged me to say this out loud during such epiphanies: “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is”

"So I do the same now, and so do my kids and grandkids. And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”

More on wellbeing? Here are 5 ways to wellbeing.

If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is

In both a “great! we’re improving kind of way,” and also a “teaching to the test” kind of way. From Richard Hamming’s, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering.

What gets measured gets better

Advice indirectly from Nigella Lawson in her husband Charles Saatchi’s book. Also, a pretty direct reading from How to Win Friends and Influence People.

Sketchplanations tagged with wisdom