Tomiwa Adey

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Knowledge creates distance

The better I become at something, the harder it can become to remember not knowing it.

Written Mar 2019 · Updated Sept 2026

The better I become at something, the harder it can become to remember not knowing it.

I stop seeing steps. I see one action.

Then somebody new asks for help and I say, “You just do this.”

There is normally a lot hiding inside just.

Experts compress things#

This compression is part of expertise.

A strong chess player does not inspect the board as unrelated pieces. A programmer does not read every character separately. A pilot does not treat every instrument as a new object on every flight.

Patterns that once required attention become units. That is why experts can work quickly.

It is also why their explanations can be terrible.

Research on the curse of knowledge found that better-informed people struggle to ignore what they know when estimating the judgement of someone with less information. In education, researchers have described a related “expert blind spot”: subject expertise can make it harder to predict what learners will find difficult.

Knowledge removes the memory of the gap.

An expert sees one compressed action where a beginner sees several missing steps

The expert path is fast because the intermediate steps have become invisible.

“Obvious” is normally a warning#

When I want to say something is obvious, I should stop.

Obvious to whom?

The person may be missing a term, a tool, a permission, an example or the reason the task matters. Repeating the final instruction more slowly will not restore the missing step.

This happens outside teaching too.

A product team may describe an interface as intuitive because everyone in the room has used it for six months. A manager may call a brief clear because they already know the desired answer. A founder may think the problem is urgent because they have spoken to fifty customers and the investor has spoken to none.

The distance is real even when the expert cannot feel it.

Rebuild the staircase#

To explain something well, I need to decompress it.

I can do that by watching a beginner rather than imagining one. Ask them to attempt the task without help. Notice where they pause, what they call things and which decision they cannot see.

Then rebuild the steps:

  1. Show the finished thing.
  2. Explain why it matters.
  3. Name the first physical action.
  4. Expose the decisions that expertise normally hides.
  5. Let the person try before adding more explanation.

The aim is not to explain everything I know.

It is to reduce the distance enough for the other person to move.

Knowledge creates distance. Good teaching remembers to build a way back.

Research sources