Joe redefines expertise: “An expert just means somebody who has not known how to do something for a very long period of time and kept on trying.” This means experts have been imposters more than anyone else — they’ve failed more, been wrong more, and iterated more.
This reframe dissolves the pedestal we place experts on. There is no perfect book, no perfect company, no right way to do anything. There’s only the way we’re called to do it and the experiments we run. If you knew exactly what you were doing, it wouldn’t be interesting — it would be a to-do list like washing dishes.
“The whole idea of an expert just means it’s somebody who has not known how to do something for a very long period of time and kept on trying. That’s what makes them an expert. It means they failed more than everybody else.”
The implication: the feeling of not knowing what you’re doing isn’t a bug — it’s the defining feature of doing anything meaningful.