The Curse of Knowledge
Every expert carries it. The longer you’ve worked in your field, the more automatic your understanding becomes, and the harder it is to remember what the problem felt like before you knew how to solve it.
This creates some specific failures in thought leadership: Publishing content that’s technically accurate but emotionally disconnected. Assuming a level of understanding that the audience doesn’t have. Skipping over the feelings that make people care about solutions in the first place. And addressing the problem from the outside rather than from the perspective of someone who’s still living with it.
Your audience doesn’t experience their problem the way you understand it. They experience it as confusion, frustration, embarrassment, anxiety, or resignation. They don’t see the solution clearly yet. They may not even have the vocabulary to describe what’s wrong precisely. They just know something isn’t working, and they’re tired of it.
