How many times in a day do you say, “I don’t know”? I say it at least a dozen times. And then a dozen times, I learn something new or someone teaches me something new.

There is nothing better or more refreshing—well other than a cocktail—than a new idea or concept infiltrating your mind and intertwining with the knowledge already inside your head, growing your ever-evolving bank of thoughts.

Not knowing something doesn’t mean you’re not skilled enough or you’re not capable. It doesn’t mean you’re not worthy of a promotion or praise or recognition. How you handle not knowing is what makes you an asset and makes you smarter than people who seem to know everything. You can’t sit around waiting for someone to give you the answer because—guess what?— no one cares to give you the answer any more than you seem to care to figure it out.

Caring to find out. When you care, you do one of the following:

1. Look at similar problems, past trends, and the information you have thus far.
2. Google it.
3. Ask someone.
4. Repeat until you solve for X.

Using logic, creativity, past experiences, and/or other people to learn and understand to find a solution is what makes someone valuable. Knowing everything doesn’t make someone anything other than a person who memorizes really, really well. Also, no one knows everything. And that is a fact. Jon Snow knows nothing. And that’s still debatable.

I went to school with someone who was a master of memorizing. They knew a lot. However, when a change was thrown into an equation or a theory or a thought, they froze. And not to think it through, they just had no answer because the fundamental and foundational theories were not learned, they were memorized.

“If you know how to think, it empowers you far beyond those who know only what to think.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson.