The curse of expertise

Do you know how sometimes when you learn about something a lot, you become really good at it? Like if you love playing piano and practice every day, you get really good at playing it. That's called expertise.

But sometimes, when you become an expert in one thing, it can actually make it harder for you to learn or understand other things. That's called the curse of expertise.

This happens because when you know a lot about something, your brain gets used to thinking in a certain way. You start to see things from one specific angle, which is really helpful when you're doing the thing you're an expert in. But when you try to learn or understand something new, your brain is stuck thinking in the old way, even if that way doesn't make sense for the new thing.

So for example, let's say you're an expert in soccer. You know all the rules, all the strategies, and you play it all the time. But then you try to learn tennis. You might have a harder time understanding tennis because your brain is so used to thinking about sports in terms of soccer. Tennis might seem really confusing and weird to you because you're trying to think about it like it's soccer.

But the good news is, you can overcome the curse of expertise by being aware of it. If you know that you might find it harder to learn or understand new things because you're an expert in something else, you can try to approach the new thing with an open mind. You can remind yourself that it's okay if it doesn't make sense right away, and try to think about it in a new way instead of trying to fit it into your old thinking. That way, you can use your expertise to help you learn new things instead of letting it be a curse.