Ok, so I’ve used the term grok many times in my life and in many contexts. As I started putting this blog together I had to ask myself:

Do I really grok the grok?

Whenever I’ve used the term it was based more around my believing that the term meant ‘to understand’ in really a pure form. For example, I may be having a discussion around the design of an asynchronous messaging system when someone clarifies an opaqueness. This clarification I would equate with my new found understanding means I now ‘grok’ it.

However, reading the accepted definition for grok leads me to a different understanding. To grok something means that you instinctively/intuitively know it. You did not derive or deduce it, instead it just is.

Ok, so this brings to mind these questions:

What do I really grok?

Do I really grok my work?

What have I grokked lately?

What the grok!?!?

Seriously though, the best way I can describe what it means to grok something, according to the english dictionary snobs, is to ask this question: What shape is in the image below?

In your mind you immediately thought ‘square’. You didn’t have to think about it. It just was.

This is what it means to grok something I think.

But wait, how did we intuitively come to know this? We learned it and internalized it to the point where almost no thinking is required. Ok then, so as long as we are able to learn ‘something’ to the point that the facts become intuitive that ‘something’ we can say we grok.

I totally grok this.