Imposter or Dunning?
As I have attempted to get more self-aware through the years, one of the things that I keep thinking about is whether on any subject matter of my interest, for it’s key areas, I know enough to have an opinion or not?
Objective assessments are there to help with evaluating the basics. But, whether one understands something at an advanced level, especially on applying that body of knowledge in the real world towards solving hard open-ended problems, tends to be a bit subjective.
Frequently we need to make self-assessments and here is where the doubts start creeping in. What I have understood about myself is that the more I know about a subject matter, the less confident I am in making opinion on it. For me, the Dunning-Kruger effect kicks early on, I start having clear ideas about something in the first 10% of knowing the subject matter. I know enough now to not opine on the open problems publicly, but in my mind they seem obvious. As, my knowledge builds up, and I start understanding the intricacies, doubts start appearing in my mind on what I don’t know.
Now this, with the unlucky combination of sometimes being in a discussion where people at the initial 10% choose to opine their “Dunning opinions”, tends to push me in the imposter zone. While opining publicly in such situations, I have to cross this mental barrier which sometimes tends to get clubbed with a fair bit of anxiety.
What I have found useful in such cases is the Expansion approach of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. My spouse, who is a Clinical Psychologist, exposed me to the ideas of this new approach, which recommends allowing and accepting the doubts and anxieties, but still move ahead and express one wants to say/write/draw.
The corollary is to keep learning with a baseline curiosity, neither bail out because of a few negative experiences, nor overcompensate by dogging aggressively for a short while burning myself out. As Aristotle said a few thousand years ago - “The more you know, the more you know, you don’t know.”