Write for the Version of You From Two Years Ago

You don’t post because somewhere in your head, you’re not enough of an “expert.”

The real expert is the person at the top of the mountain, right? The one with the book and the keynote and the following. Next to that, who are you to say anything?

So you stay quiet, simply because you’re comparing your own blooper reel to everyone else’s highlight reel. You live inside your head, so you know every mistake and every doubt you carry. You only see other people’s finished, cleaned-up, published work. You overestimate them, underestimate yourself, and decide you’ve got nothing worth saying.

Meanwhile the person who needed exactly what you know never hears it, because the expert you’re deferring to can’t reach that person either.

The knowledge gap

There’s research in teaching around the “knowledge gap.” Say you’re a level 10 out of 10 on a subject, talking to someone at a 1. You try to dumb it down, but you’ve been at the summit so long the lowest you can actually reach is maybe a 4. It’s just too hard to put yourself in that level-one frame of mind. You’re still teaching three levels over their head. They get frustrated because they’re not getting it, and you get frustrated because it seems obvious to you.

The person who can close the gap is the 6 talking to the 1. Someone who was at the bottom recently enough to remember the exact mistake at level 2, and the question that finally cracked level 4.

The person sitting at level one doesn’t need the guru sitting on top of the mountain.

So stop trying to impress the whole industry. Aim to help the version of you from two years ago. What do you wish someone had told you back then? What would have saved you the wrong turn you spent six months on?

Write that. The person two years behind you is out there right now, looking for the post you haven’t published.