The common assumption is: get competent → become confident → be charismatic. But this chain is broken at every link. Harvard has more imposter syndrome than Tufts despite far more competent people. The more you achieve, the more you can lose.
“Competence doesn’t lead to confidence. A one-year-old trying to feed themselves — they suck at it, but they still have a ton of confidence.”
Confidence comes from not fearing failure — from knowing you can survive it. When you fall down and pick yourself up, you can afford to fall down again. Then you can walk into any situation without knowing what will happen and still be confident.
Joe adds a reframe on imposter syndrome: “That’s because you’re an imposter. You don’t know what you’re doing. None of us do. Bezos made it up. Elon made it up. If we knew what we were doing, we wouldn’t be doing anything innovative.” The issue isn’t eliminating imposter syndrome — it’s recognizing you actually are improvising, and that’s fine.
The practical approach: fail. Just fail. It’s faster and dirtier than trying to build confidence through competence. Design situations where you iterate constantly, where failure isn’t failure but experimentation.