A lot of the time people don’t know what they are doing
Sasha Chapin introduces the idea that people actually rarely know what they are doing. If they are good at something, it’s because of great time invested to build expert intuition. Rarely, people think “I know exactly what I am doing right now and I know I am good at it.”. This is also true for things where people would say I am great at. Whenever that happens, I happen to think “Yea, you just don’t know that I am winging it.”.
And I think that’s central here: often we a) overestimate the steps others are at (Oh, they are so great and must know that they are so great at what they are doing!) and b) underestimate the step we are at (because we can put it into a context – and rarely, our contexts shifts overnight in a way that makes us acknowledge how much we’ve grown.).
So, the obvious implication from this is: bring a) and b) closer together. People who you think are great also mostly just wing it. And you are not so far away from being able to wing it either.
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