Thread by @wingchun_life

#Thread
CURSE OF KNOWLEDGE:
This is a powerful cognitive bias, and the one that's probably most responsible for you staying stuck in your dead-end way of doing things instead of breaking out.

What is it?
The mind's inability to remember what it was like to not know something.

At first glance you may think this is a relatively unimportant thing. Completely harmless.

But it's robbing you of your freedom. Here's how.

To understand, we're going to use an example from my life: Magic Tricks.

I'm a professional mentalist; I've performed in Vegas.

I know how the mind works, and I understand why the simple methods of magic are so powerful; they leverage exactly these kinds of mental hiccups. So, here's the example.

I do a trick, and you want to know how it works. You'll do ANYTHING. Pay me $100, even. Great! Pay up!

You pay me $100, and then I sit down to teach you /exactly/ how the trick works that you couldn't figure out.

I show you the "secret" that is actually pretty simple, but elegant in how it tricks your mind. You see just how simple it is and then CLICK: the curse of knowledge!

You say, "That will never fool anyone!"

Sidenote: If you're reading this right now, and you think I'm making this up; I've had EXACTLY this process happen literally 1,000s of times when I worked at a magic shop in Universal Studios in Orlando.

People will pay money to learn the trick, learn the trick, and then their mind can't conceive of how things were 2 minutes before. They're cursed with the knowledge of the secret, AND THEY THINK EVERYONE ELSE KNOWS IT BECAUSE IT'S SO SIMPLE.

It's an evolutionary narcissism at play. We're concerned with ourselves. Reference all experience through ourselves. And have a real tough time imagining someone else's experience, even for a SECOND.

This is the curse of knowledge. You can't imagine life without what you know.

This influences all aspects of your life. And worse? Your business.

You know a lot more about whatever you're interested in than I do. I don't have your experience. I'm not cursed with your knowledge. That means what you know is valuable if I'm interested in your hobby.

But, due to your curse of knowledge, you think, "Well, everyone knows that! There's nothing I could say that anyone would want to hear."

Oh really? How much money have you spent learning all that stuff before you understood it? Hundreds? Thousands, maybe?

And it's not valuable?

The simplest thing to you is incredibly complex & complicated to anyone else who hasn't had the time & experience that you have. What you think is perfectly obvious is entirely hidden behind the veil of ignorance.

Now you see why it's so dangerous.

You're giving up the opportunity to teach others who would pay you for what you think is obvious. THE FACT IT'S OBVIOUS TO YOU IS PROOF YOU SHOULD BE SHARING IT. That means you're good at it.

But be careful.

The Curse of Knowledge™ can mess you up on this side, too.

You think your students know stuff they don't know because you assume everyone knows where you're starting. They don't.

How you think you should present information isn't necessarily how it should be presented.

Your way of organizing info makes sense to someone w/ a complete understanding of the skill/area you're talking about, but is probably entirely wacky to someone who has zero previous experience.

You'll think they're on the same page as you & they're wandering the library lost.

As my high school debate teacher told me: "You gotta get 'em in the car before you drive off. You can't speed by at 70mph and expect them to hop in."

You have to figure out where they are, start with relatable examples, and then slowly move on from there.

Where will you be meeting them?

WAY FARTHER BACK THAN YOU EVER THOUGHT YOU'D HAVE TO BACK UP.

When you truly, deeply, thoroughly understand how big this curse is you'll unlock so much potential to share valuable knowledge.

(Which is ironic because now you have knowledge of the curse of knowledge, and that'll mess you up for a week or two as you think through THAT.)

In Conclusion
Pull your head out of your own curse of knowledge ass, figure out who wants to pay you for this "totally obvious stuff" and go sell it!

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