Jeff Bezos passed this note with his team about how severely we underestimate the lengths we need to go through to acquire a skill, any skill – in this case, a handstand.

If only the process of learning something would be as smooth as the graph above where know when you're moving from unskilled and unaware to at least reaching the self-awareness to understand your incompetence. 

There should be a word for this ‘click’ that happens; when you go from unskilled and unaware, to reaching the self-awareness to understand your own incompetence. But when you’re still in the don’t-know-anything-zone, we call it the Dunning-Kruger effect.

The reality is after we first start learning it's fun at first, and then it becomes super frustrating. Many people give up at that point. This is why a lot of people know a couple of chords on the guitar but not much else, a handful of phrases in another language, but can't hold a conversation etcetera. There's nothing wrong with stopping to learn at this frustrating point, and the likes of Seth Godin even encourages it in his short and to-the-point publication, The Dip. 

Another example would be from my sector, the tech industry. It’s not uncommon that those technically minded spin marketing, social media management, PR, and even design and product (cos why not) all into ‘marketing’. The stories I’ve heard of some tech business expecting ‘a marketing intern’ to execute all of these varied fields during their 6-week stint would be hilarious if it wasn’t also so condescending. I know, because I’ve been there.

This shows their unconscious incompetence of “the business side” because actual marketers would say “oh, I don’t do PR – hire someone else for that”, and the other ways around – because they are not all the same thing. Which demonstrates expertise in the field actually, because marketing is not design which is not social media marketing which is not PR.

This leads us to the second brain-breaker when it comes to our abilities and our ability to perceive our own abilities accurately: “the exceptionally competent don't perceive how unusual their abilities are".

If you’ve ever worked with programmers and complimented them on their excellent work who don’t smile and say thank you but instead just look very sheepish because they “just googled it”, you’ve witnessed an expert at work.

Well, what exactly was it that they googled? We all know that Google has all the answers – but we can only extract the relevant information when we know what questions to ask. Have you ever found yourself in a situation where your knowledge of something is so limited you don’t even know what to put in the Google machine?

That’s the difference.

– The New Yorker

The relationship between how much you know and how much you don't has a reverse impact on how much you think you know.

• If you don't know anything; "ah, how hard can it be"
  => Often displayed as confidence. Arrogance even.
• If you already know a lot; "oh man, there's so much I don't understand fully yet”
  => I don’t know if I’m the best person to ask
  The time spent asking "how on Earth do these pieces fit together...." and googling and researching and spreadsheeting and writing until finally something clicks, forgotten.

Those able doubt and those not so able display confidence.

Bertrand Russell was born in 1872. This is not a new phenomenon.

It’s also real. Have you ever been deep in imposter syndrome land, full of doubts about yourself, your ability, your place, your motives, your outfit, your everything – and then suddenly someone comes along, and questions you?

Well, I’m sure you have. This is why job interviews and applications and networking and sharing creative work online and moving to a new place etcetera is really scary and overwhelming. Not only do we feel completely incompetent, but now we have to demonstrate how we’re not. Oh and don’t worry, all that is at stake is everything. Your name, your reputation, your livelihood.

How often have I had some IRL reddit nerd mansplain to me that the business I’m in doesn’t make sense? It’s intimidating as fuck. More often than I can tell you, and it took me years to figure out the language to deal with these trolls, who think just because they know how to code, they suddenly understand the business model of the live entertainment industry. Bro, just no.

Or have you ever had someone just flat out devalue the worth of all of your skills in an instant, even after they recognised it?

You feel like an imposter, because you are an imposter. You are affecting the social order. If you don’t want to do that, you’re out of luck. This is why gays move out of their villages, and why both black people and women have movements around them. Celebrities have mental health problems. Very often the options are to suffer, leave, or fight. Or any combination of the three.

But this applies wider as well. Just because someone doesn’t have an obvious "minority identity" doesn’t make their imposter syndrome any less real. Maybe they’re overcoming addiction. Maybe they were raised in an abusive household. Maybe they have a serious mental health condition. Maybe they’re from a farm, or a trailer. Maybe they don’t have ‘the right’ education. Maybe they have no education. And maybe they’re just some normal kid who can’t believe they’ve worked themselves up to the situation they’ve just found themselves in.

And sometimes we are just awed by the company in which we find ourselves.

We see people of the Neils’ stature as their achievements. We don’t see the incredible cost they’ve accrued to get there. We don’t know how their home town responded to their ambition. We don’t know how their family felt about them leaving. We don’t know how many early mornings or sleepless nights or missed parties there have been. We don’t know how many other opportunities they have sacrificed to get to where they got to.

But those are the struggles we face day-to-day. Our inner monologue of doubts and insecurity is, thankfully, private. But so is everybody else’s.

Oh, and if you think not everyone needs a reminder – this is a private note one Taylor Swift wrote to herself while she was on the RED tour (it did well).

Each of us get to choose how much, if any, of it we share with each other. I’d be hard-pressed to find any creative who doesn’t have inertia to share their work. Austin Klein wrote a book about it. You should read that one too, it’s called Show Your Work. It’s also a quick read, but an incredibly valuable one.

I think we don’t want to share our work for two reasons. Because what if it’s shit, that would be embarrassing. Right? But. But, also – what if it’s good?

It’s way scarier if it’s good. If it’s shit, you can still go down to the pub with your mates and make jokes about it.

If it’s good, you’ve achieved something. You’ve earned somebody’s respect. You’re changing the social order again. There’s resistance there. You might have to move to a bigger city to follow the success. You might go on TV. You might get more money than your peers you’ve grown up with all your life. Or more money than your partner. Or parents.