“If I knew back then what I know now , then I could have ………”. Ah, what a sad lament.  The logic of the statement rings true.  For example if I knew shares In Apple were going to appreciate the way they have before the price began to rise.

Or that Nortel would go bankrupt.  That Bre-X was a fraud.  That Donald Trump would get elected.  The pain I could have avoided, the profit I could have made.

Lamenting the Unknown

The benefit of hindsight is fairly obvious .  There is none.  The probability that you will ever know what the future will bring with absolute certainty is nil.

Recognition that the unknown exists is key to making good decisions.  Attempting to predict the unknown and acting on those predictions can be a risky business.

A better practice is to quantify what you know and where possible what you don’t know.  In some cases of course you won’t even know what you don’t know.   Those cases cannot be quantified.

Knowledge Based Actions

Knowledge is a combination of the things you know and those you don’t know.  That is, you know of them, but don’t know the answer.  (Obviously things you don’t know of at all cannot be included)

Knowledge based decision making is  based on known information (included those with an unknown quantity but which you are aware of).  This method provides better results than hindsight or historical data.