On Learning — Overcoming Self Doubt, The Dunning-Kruger Effect
Hey, hope you all are having an awesome week, and welcome back! Last Saturday I finally dare to post my story online, after nearly a year of grappling with social anxiety. I received so much love and encouraging comments from you all, so thank you.
To continue my journey, I mentioned that I would like to share at least one short story every week. Turns out writing a 5-minute article is so challenging. Apart from finding the time and fighting procrastination, it’s a constant battle of accepting how horrible my writing skills are. This week I want to share a good reminder that helped me overcome this barrier, and the good news is, it’s not unique to learning to write.
I’m obviously not a content writer or a creator (yet!), but I do actually write for a living. As a Product Manager in a tech company, my job is to articulate ideas to a piece of document, create a solid argument around it, and pitch it to colleagues so that we can build it together. So after dozens of work documents were published, I thought I was somewhat a half-decent writer. But quickly I realize content writing is a whole different skill set. Within a few lines, I become aware of how suck my grammar is, how limited my vocabulary is, and how linear and boring my storytelling is.
Suddenly I was contemplating whether my writing was even good enough for people to see. I worry how others will judge my sub-par work, and took away perception about me that they would’ve not gotten without reading my story. Well eventually I took the courage to push that “Publish” button, but the feelings came back this week as I started to write this second story.
I remember reading somewhere about a cognitive bias called “The Dunning Kruger Effect” that describes what I’m going through perfectly. Turns out, I’m experiencing a totally normal psychological effect of learning.
The Dunning–Kruger effect is the cognitive bias whereby people with low ability at a task overestimate their ability. Some researchers also include in their definition the opposite effect for high performers: their tendency to underestimate their skills. — Wikipedia
“The Dunning Kruger Effect” applies to just about anything when it comes to learning. Some skills might have a shorter cycle like flying a kite, and some might take longer like playing the piano. Unknowingly, I’ve been through lots of these cycles before, and I am going through it again with my journey of learning to write.
There are lots of article and books that cover this psychological phenomenon, but I would like to share a personal experience that helped me understand this theory more deeply, and it has to do with the football game FIFA. Yes, that FIFA game that every non-gamer uses to proclaim themselves as gamers.
Stage 1: The Early Peak — “Of Course, I know Everything”
I have played FIFA (or previously Winning Eleven) all my life. The game itself has been around since 1993 and has survived multiple consoles from Sega to the PlayStation(s), and eventually goes online in this internet era. For decades it has been the go-to game for boys gathering sessions regardless of age and nationality (this is how I made friends when I was in Singapore lol).
I’ve been playing the game the same way since the early 2000s. Same setup, same tactics, same controller settings. And I’ve been winning games with the way I played, so why should I change? However over the years, the game becomes more complex, and suddenly it’s not as straightforward as running and shooting anymore. I noticed there were new techniques and tricks, but I was too arrogant to learn, until recently.
Stage 2: The Downfall — “Oh, is there more to it than I thought?”
The tipping point was when I lived with a friend for a month. Every day we played, and day by day I got beaten by him. Well, it doesn’t matter how successful you are in life, losing a FIFA game is a huge blow to your ego.
Enough is enough, and I am determined to learn some of these new techniques to avoid getting my ass kicked again. So I went to where every smart person goes to learn, YouTube. I watched a bunch of videos about attacking, defending, team setup, etc. However, the execution was a lot harder than the explainer videos. Not only I have to learn the new skills, but I also need to unlearn the things I’ve already gotten used to. It’s like trying to write with your left hand. You know in your mind what and how to do it, but in practice, it feels so unnatural.
The following days were like an ego boot camp. As I was struggling to figure out which button to push, I saw the smirk on my friend’s face as he scored more and more goals. The scoreline was, humbling to say the least, 5–0, 4–1, 4–0. It was so tempting to scrap the whole plan and go back to the way I used to play, at least I was not losing as badly. But I continued to try.
Stage 3: The Steady Rise — “It’s finally starting to make some sense”
On the third day, I started to find my way around it and reduce the score margins. On the fifth, I started winning a few games. In a week, I completely change the way I played for the past 15 years and turned around my losses to wins. What initially feels like a handicap, turns into an advantage that made the difference.
You might think this whole story is nonsense, and it is, given the context of winning a FIFA game, but it was such a simple example of how my own mind can become the biggest obstacle to learning progress. In retrospect, there were so many things that I gave up just because I was too prideful to be bad at it. The most important thing is to understand that no one was born an expert. Even people like Lionel Messi or Steve Jobs were once newbies in their own fields.
I’ll leave you with this. It’s not about knowing a fancy psychology term such as the Dunning-Kruger effect; at the end of the day, there’s only one key success to learning. Be brave enough to suck at something new.
