The Curse of Knowledge

In reading Jonah Berger’s book “ Magic Words “, he shared some thoughts on “The Curse of Knowledge” and how it can impact the ways that you communicate with others. In his words:

This curse has a name, and appropriately, it is called the curse of knowledge. It’s a curse because the more we know, the more we assume others know, and thus the more we end up communicating in ways that are tough to understand. And abstractness is the cause.

I face this a bit from both sides, depending on where my knowledge is strong versus where it’s weak.

Where I’m strong, I need to be careful not to talk past people. In the world of marketing, it’s easy to just rattle off things like SEO, PPC, DNS, CRO and dozens of other acronyms that many people don’t immediately recognize. These are things that are important for us to utilize with our clients, so I try to be careful to explain them the first time around.

Where I’m weak, these are times when I just need to raise questions quickly. If I’m having car trouble, a mechanic could quickly blow past the depths of my automotive knowledge, so I’ll often slow them down a bit to explain what they really mean.

In both cases, trust is crucial. Our clients need to trust that when I’m using those acronyms that I’m serious about what I mean and how it will help them. For things like the…