If you’re reading this, you’ve probably had that experience of carefully explaining something you know deeply, only to be met with blank stares. There’s that moment of confusion. How could something so obvious to you be so opaque to others?
This disconnect isn’t about intelligence or attention, but rather a cognitive blind spot we all develop. Let’s call it the curse of knowledge. Once we thoroughly understand something, our brains literally cannot simulate what it’s like not to know it. The neural pathways that formed during our learning process become so efficient that we can no longer access the memory of confusion, uncertainty, and discovery that marked our own journey from ignorance to understanding.
This cognitive blindness creates a fascinating paradox: the deeper your expertise grows in any domain, the worse you often become at communicating that expertise to newcomers. The language, concepts, and connections that feel elementary to you exist in a different cognitive universe for your listener. What you consider “basic terminology” might be completely foreign territory for them. The steps you skip as “obviously implied” represent critical missing links in their understanding.
What domain knowledge do you possess that others find difficult to grasp? Try this exercise: identify three concepts you consider “fundamentally obvious” in your field and force yourself to explain them as if to someone who has absolutely no background knowledge. Notice where you want to use shorthand or specialized vocabulary, where you unconsciously make conceptual leaps. These moments of impatience reveal exactly where your expertise has constructed a communication barrier that only deliberate awareness can dismantle.
