The joy of one's own incompetence

Yesterday, I was sitting in the Swedish forest¹, picking away at a rotting log with a stick, hoping to uncover its earthy core. Simultaneously, I was pondering how to live a satisfied life. The closer I got to the centre of the log, the harder it became to make progress, as the wood was getting tougher. The same held true for the question I was pondering. I thought of my problems in mathematics: I don’t spend enough time working, when I am working I am not making as much progress as I would like, and —² most importantly — I am not well-read enough to actually understand what other people tell me.

My transition from Master’s student to PhD researcher was marked by significantly higher expectations of myself, and I felt like I had to feign competence and knowledge of what I considered to be in my area of research — fluid dynamics. The overwhelming feeling going into my PhD was: I should know what you are talking about, I should be able to follow this — but I’m not, and that’s on me³. In the interest of not exposing my own incompetence, I often nodded along to my colleagues’ technical explanations of their work.

After fifteen minutes of picking at the log, I decided to give up. An almost euphoric feeling came over me. Das Glück der eigenen Inkompetenz — The joy of one’s own incompetence. Owning up to your lack of understanding, asking for simpler explanations over and over again — those are experiences fundamental to learning, but external forces make it hard for us to actually own up to our lack of knowledge. This means asking not just one question, but multiple follow-ups, pinning down the point you didn’t understand or the gap in your knowledge — especially when it is a fundamental gap. It means asking questions not to impress anybody with your depth of understanding, but asking precisely when you don’t have that depth, or when you don’t even know what they are talking about! Don’t be ashamed to admit that the speaker lost you after slide one.

Today at lunch, I learned more about the work of my colleagues than I have over the past two weeks.

Julius