In his book “Ego Is the Enemy“, author Ryan Holiday spends a good deal of time essentially breaking down the Dunning-Krueger Effect and how overconfidence can be a bad thing.
Confidence, in and of itself, is valuable to have. When you become overconfident and your ego creeps in, it can often inhibit your growth. If you’re able to maintain an uninflated, unexaggerated understanding of your true abilities, you’ll be much more likely to succeed – because you’ll be prepared to put in the hard work.
As Holiday says:
“The pretense of knowledge is our most dangerous vice, because it prevents us from getting any better.”
Or dropping back to Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus:
“It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows”
Being confident in what you know is a great thing, and can be essential in many roles. If you need to convince your boss or a potential client of a particular path to take, you need to be confident in what you’re saying. However, growing that confidence to the point of ego will limit your growth, and over time that confidence will have less of a foundation of truth behind it.
Stay confident, but stay curious.
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