The more you know, the harder it becomes to explain.
That sounds backwards, right? We assume expertise leads to clarity. That once we’ve mastered something, we’ll be better at teaching it.
But the truth is the opposite.
The more familiar an idea becomes in your head, the harder it is to remember what it’s like not to know it. You skip steps. Use shorthand. Fill in the blanks automatically. And somewhere along the way, your message gets lost.
That’s the curse of knowledge and it’s quietly ruining your communication.
What is the curse of knowledge
The curse of knowledge is a cognitive bias – a mental blind spot – that creeps in once you’ve become fluent in something.
You lose touch with what it felt like to be a beginner. You forget what it’s like to be outside the world you now live in.
So you start speaking in ways that only make sense inside your head. You think you’re being clear, but what your audience hears is a blur of jargon, skipped logic, and context they don’t have.
If you work in a technical or complex industry, you’ve probably fallen into it. I know I have. And yep, it stings every time.
Especially when we care deeply about a topic. Ironically, the more important a message feels, the more we assume we’ve made it obvious – when really, we may have hidden it away under a mountain of assumptions.
The most famous demonstration of the curse of knowledge comes from a simple experiment that you should know about.
The tappers and the listeners
In their book Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath describe a 1990 psychological study from Stanford researcher Elizabeth Newton.
She took a set of participants and split them into two groups: tappers and listeners.
Tappers were asked to tap out the rhythm of a well-known song – like ‘Happy Birthday’ – on a table. The listeners had to guess the song based on the taps.
Before they began, tappers were asked, “How often do you think listeners will guess correctly?“
They thought the answer would be about half: 50% of the time.
After the experiment, the researchers counted up the correct answers, and what they found is that listeners were only able to identify the song correctly 2.5% of the time.
That is 20 times worse than expected.
Why this happens
When you’re the tapper, you can hear the song in your head. The changes in pitch and emphasis, as you move along through the melody. Tap – Tap – Tap – Tap.
But when you’re the listener, much like when you read the Taps above, you only get a string of disconnected taps. Without the background context, the music becomes noise. You can’t tell that it was Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5.
That’s what the curse of knowledge looks like in real life. You think you’re being clear because your mind is filling in the gaps. But your audience doesn’t have the same soundtrack.
I see the curse play out every day.
A founder skips explaining the problem they solve and jumps straight into features. A leader presents a strategy deck and assumes everyone’s on the same page. An expert talks in acronyms and frameworks no one else understands.
These people are all smart. They all know their stuff and they care deeply. But that’s exactly what gets in the way. They forget what others don’t know, and that’s what makes it hard to bring people along.
How to beat the curse
When someone doesn’t understand us, we often blame their attention, their interest, their intelligence. But we don’t stop to ask: Did I explain it in a way that made sense to them?
That’s where the curse of knowledge lives – in the gap between what we meant and what they heard.
So how do you beat it? Not by becoming less intelligent, but by working hard to bridge the gap. Here are the techniques I use to do that:
1. Strip it back
One of the hardest things about being experienced is knowing what not to say.
When you’re close to an idea, every part of it feels important. You want to share the whole thing, show the full picture, do justice to the complexity.
But your audience doesn’t need the full picture. Not at first. They just need a single, solid starting point. Something they can grab onto and say, “Okay, I get that.”
Your job is to strip your message back to that one clear idea. Not what you’re most excited to say, or what’s the most impressive, but what they need to hear first. The rest can come later.
Think of it like laying kindling. You don’t need to build the whole fire from scratch, just spark something small and clear enough to catch.
So before you write or speak, remember to ask: If they only remember one thing, what should it be? Then build everything around that.
2. Use stories and analogies
Facts alone don’t stick. You might get the idea, but without something to anchor it, it floats away.
That’s where analogies and stories come in. They’re tools for translation. They help someone unfamiliar with your world understand it in terms of theirs.
Let’s say you’re trying to explain how an API works. You could start with technical detail. Or you could say:
“It’s like being at a restaurant. You give your order to the waiter. The kitchen prepares it. You never see how it’s made because the waiter handles the whole exchange. That’s what an API does for software systems.”
Suddenly, it clicks.
Stories work the same way. A real person, a relatable challenge, a decision, a moment. These don’t just explain, they create emotional weight and make people care.
That’s why I told you about the tappers and the listeners.
If your audience is zoning out, it’s probably because you’re stuck in theory. So use your stories and bring it to life.
3. Use simple words
You don’t sound smarter when you use big words. You just make your audience work harder.
Business and tech are full of phrases like: “Our SaaS platform leverages hyper-spectral imaging and AI/ML to optimise agricultural input application through real-time soil parameter analytics.
But what does that actually mean? If you’re explaining this to potential users or customers, you’ll have far more impact by saying: We help farmers grow better crops by using technology to understand their soil and tell them exactly what it needs.
Simple language isn’t less intelligent. It’s more considerate. It removes the mental load from your audience. They don’t have to decode your meaning, they just get it.
The more specific and visual your words, the more likely people are to understand and remember what you said.
There’s a test I use: Could someone repeat this to a friend in their own words without butchering it?
If not, go simpler.
4. Test your message
You are the worst judge of your own clarity.
Because in your head, everything makes sense. You’re the tapper, and the melody is loud and clear. But the only way to know if your message is landing is to test it out loud.
Explain your idea to someone outside your field. Watch their face. Notice where they frown or get lost. Pay attention to their questions – they reveal where the gaps are.
Then, ask them to explain it back to you.
If they get it wrong, that’s not a failure. That’s feedback. It shows where the curse of knowledge is creeping in – where you’ve skipped over something or assumed too much.
Now revise. Cut. Change the order. Try a new metaphor. Then test again.
This is how great communicators work. They treat their message like a prototype – build, test, refine.
Over time, you’ll develop an ear for it. You’ll notice when people lean in, nod, or say “Ahh, now I get it.” That moment is your signal. You’ve translated the melody. You’ve bridged the gap.
Final thoughts
The more you know, the more you need to work at clarity. Because your brain will keep tricking you into thinking your message is clear. That’s the curse.
If you want your ideas to land, you need to fight the curse of knowledge every single day. Don’t assume the melody is coming through. Tap slower. Speak clearer. Start from where your listener is, not where you are.
Because when you make it easy for someone else to understand, you make a bigger impact.
