Why am I good at nothing? I’ve talked before about how you can make a difference even if you feel (or actually are) average. But what if you are not as average as you think you are?
What if you are negatively biased and downplay your work? That might well be the case.
To open up your mind, I suggest you read these two articles.
“Obvious to you. Amazing to others.”
You think, “I never would have thought of that. How do they even come up with that? It’s genius!” Afterwards, you think, “My ideas are so obvious. I’ll never be as inventive as that.”
But I continue to do my work. I tell my little tales. I share my point of view. Nothing spectacular. Just my ordinary thoughts.
One day someone emailed me and said, “I never would have thought of that. How did you even come up with that? It’s genius!”
Of course I disagreed and explained why it was nothing special. But afterwards, I realised something surprisingly profound: Everybody’s ideas seem obvious to them.
“Are You Suffering From the Curse of Knowledge?”
You are faced with some complex topic to learn. At first, it’s difficult. You have certain questions. You fall into certain traps. You are confused by certain things.
And then, suddenly, you get it. Things fall into place, and you start moving freely through the new subject matter.
Then, without you noticing, things change.
The knowledge that you have gathered becomes natural to you. You forget what it was like not knowing this. You become to “unconsciously competent”. It just seems so self-evident by now.
This is the curse of knowledge at work: The longer you have the knowledge, the less you are aware of it.
