Why feeling like a fraud is a huge green light
I wrote a post called “2 Things About Imposter Syndrome I’m Trying To Internalise” back in my 20s, that ironically I never published due to, you guessed it, imposter syndrome. “Who was I to make any big claims about imposter syndrome?” and “what success did I have anyway to even feel like I warranted imposter syndrome?”. Oh, the brain of a 20-something. So now as a 30-something, I’m (only slightly) refining what past-me wrote – to prove to my younger self she was in fact correct about all of it.
If you went to a super nerdy school like I did, you know this person who is the most annoying of them all:
“oh my god.
I’m freaking out.
Like freaking out.
Like I can’t breathe”.
Their grade comes back.
10 out of 10.
I’ve been that person.
Sorry if you were there for that.
I’ve also rocked up to an exam without having studied anything at all, and I got a 9. 9 out of a 100 that is, not 9 out of 10.
I deserved it.
Interestingly, I wasn’t stressed for that exam.
Or any others I’d done without studying.
I’ve only ever been stressed where I really studied, and gave it my all.
Interesting that.
It’s like we only get stressed when we really try.
Why The Unskilled Are Unaware
It’s not like we’re scared of being bad at things. Most have no problem saying “I suck at Spanish” or “I’m so bad at math”.
And this is the key. This is called the Dunning-Kruger effect, and it explores how our own awareness of our own abilities plays a bigger role than we realise.
It’s when we greatly underestimate the effort required to get good.
So being bad at something, and knowing you’re bad at something – these are not the same thing.
When we’re bad at something: we think it’s easy.
When we’re good at something, we realise how hard it is – and that’s when we start doubting ourselves.
Our vantage point changes as we learn more and start to understand the lengths needed to go to master something – or colloquially, these are four distinct stages:
You don’t know you’re sh*t
You know you’re sh*t
You know you’re good
You don’t know how good you are
… and because we can’t have nice things.
Once you get good, you become less secure about your expertise.
Having deep understanding means it all just seems obvious.
And not just obvious to you, obvious in general.
Why The Talented Are Full of Doubts
One 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 these varied fields during a 6 week stint would be hilarious if it wasn’t also so condescending.
I know, because I’ve been that intern.
It shows their lack of understanding 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 an 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 perceiving our own abilities accurately:
“the exceptionally competent don't perceive how unusual their abilities are."
That’s the difference.
The better you get, the more you understand what you don’t know. And that awareness doesn’t feel like progress,
it feels like doubt.
Most of our lives are not sport, where milestones like “you’ve made it on the national team” are more definitive.
Have you ever tried passing on your enviable skills to someone else? You may realise you’re talking in much more basic terms than the level you normally operate at.
I talk to people about GTM strategies constantly. My experience however, is I mainly end-up as tech support for Facebook. I wouldn’t even consider ‘navigating the Facebook interface’ a skill. But trust me, it is. And that’s not talking strategy.
What We Know as: Imposter Syndrome
This actually is a form of imposter syndrome, when you discount your own knowledge as assumed general knowledge. You’d be surprised how often you’d need to clarify concepts, define the vocabulary used, and provide context. It’s like the establishing shots in movies. People need to know the where and the when before they can take in your message.
The way in which everything I as a person know, seems obvious and therefore not so valuable. I certainly have forgotten the hours sunk into trying to see how things fit together. It’s weird, because as soon as something clicks, something makes sense to us, it no longer plays on our mind. So we disregard it. It becomes so obvious to us, we think it’s obvious to everyone. Even if it took us months, years even, to get there.
Experts don’t make this mistake of not recognising how much they know. The mistake they make is overestimating how much everyone else knows, therefore devaluing their entire domain of expertise.
Just because we may be experts in one area or field, it doesn’t make us an expert, period. Just because you know a whole lot about one thing, as soon as you cross the line into a different field even just a little – you are back to not knowing anything.
And if you think to yourself –well, I’m smart, how hard can it be?– I sure hope you’ve been paying attention, because then you’d know exactly where you’ve found yourself.
Straight back at the bottom of the pyramid: where in short, you’re sh*t. And you don’t even know how sh*t you are.*
