Your Skills Are Not Normal
Why what you do every day is actually impossible to most people
Three hundred people were watching me build AI agents on a live webinar.
My palms were sweating.
My heart was doing that thing where it feels like it's trying to escape through my throat.
I've been on stage in a metal band in front of crowds this size.
That was easy.
When you're in a metal band and people are pissed off, you're probably doing your job right.
But this was different.
These AI agents had to work.
They had to execute exactly as planned.
I had to explain them clearly.
There was no room for the chaos I was comfortable with.
Here's what happened instead.
As I broke down how these agents handle prospect research, write personalized emails, send campaigns, and generate leads on autopilot…
People in the chat lost their minds.
They couldn't comprehend what they were seeing.
And I'm sitting there thinking, wait, this is impressive?
This is just what I do on a Tuesday.
The Curse You Don't Know You Have
There's a psychological phenomenon researchers call the curse of knowledge.
Some call it expert blindness.
Whatever you call it, it's the reason you have no idea how good you actually are at what you do.
When you become an expert at something, you lose the ability to remember what it was like to not know it.
Your brain reorganizes information differently than a beginner's brain.
The neural pathways that took years to build now fire so automatically that you can't perceive the complexity anymore.
Cognitive research from multiple studies shows that experts consistently underestimate how difficult their work is for others.
They oversimplify when they try to explain things.
They set unrealistic expectations.
They skip foundational steps because those steps feel obvious.
But those steps aren't obvious.
They're only obvious to you because you've done them ten thousand times.
I was watching the webinar chat scroll by.
People were asking questions that seemed basic to me.
How did you connect those two systems?
Where did you learn to structure prompts like that?
How long did it take you to figure this out?
And that last question hit me.
How long did it take?
This specific skill?
About 6 months.
But the knowledge I needed to get good at automation and AI Agents?
Years.
Hundreds of hours of trial and error.
Countless failed attempts.
Reading documentation at 2 AM because something broke and I couldn't figure out why.
But when I'm doing it now, it feels effortless.
That's the trick your brain plays on you.
What Normal Looks Like From The Inside
You wake up.
You do your thing.
Maybe you design interfaces that make complex software feel intuitive.
Maybe you manage teams through organizational chaos.
Maybe you fix cars.
Maybe you troubleshoot network issues that would make most people want to throw their computer out a window.
Maybe you write code that automates processes other people spend hours on manually.
Whatever it is, you do it.
And because you do it constantly, it becomes normal.
Just another day.
Just another task.
Nothing special.
Except it is special.
Wildly special.
You've just lost all perspective.
I built AI agents that do prospect research while I sleep.
They analyze companies, find decision-makers, craft personalized outreach, and manage entire email campaigns without me touching anything.
When I break down what that actually involves:
The system architecture
The prompt engineering
The error handling
The integration points
It's genuinely complicated as hell.
But I do it regularly.
So my brain filed it under "normal Tuesday shit" and moved on.
You're doing the same thing with your skills.
You've normalized the extraordinary.
And that normalization is costing you.
The Exercise That Changes Everything
Grab a notebook.
Pick one thing you do regularly in your work.
Just one process.
Something you could do in your sleep.
Now write down every single step.
And I mean every step.
Not the high-level overview.
The actual granular process.
If you're a designer, don't write "create mockups."
Write down how you analyze user needs
How you make decisions about hierarchy and spacing
How you choose colors that work across different contexts,
How you handle feedback and iterate
How you prepare files for developers
If you're a manager, don't write "run team meetings."
Break down how you set agendas that actually matter
How you read the room and adjust on the fly
How you navigate conflicts without making anyone feel attacked
How you follow up to ensure decisions turn into action
Whatever you do, map it.
Make it visible.
Turn the invisible expertise into something concrete.
Then show it to someone outside your field.
Walk them through it step by step.
Explain how each piece works.
Watch their face.
I guarantee they'll be amazed.
Not politely impressed.
Actually amazed.
Because what you've normalized, they can't even comprehend as possible.
I did this exercise after the webinar.
I wrote out the full process for one of the AI agents I built.
Just one.
The system that handles prospect research.
When I was done, I had three full pages of detailed steps.
Decision trees
Error handling protocols
Integration logic
Prompt structures that took weeks to refine
I showed it to a friend who runs a traditional marketing agency.
He stared at it for a minute and then asked:
"How long did it take you to learn to do this?"
The background knowledge? Years.
The actual agent part?
6 months, I told him.
But on a random Tuesday when I'm building something new, it doesn't feel like years of accumulated knowledge.
It feels like Tuesday.
Why This Matters More Than You Think
You're holding yourself to impossible standards.
You're comparing your everyday output to some imaginary peak performance that doesn't exist.
You're thinking that because you haven't mastered every possible aspect of your field, you don't really know what you're doing.
That's bullshit.
You know what you're doing.
The proof is that you do it.
Successfully.
Repeatedly.
While barely thinking about it.
The problem is you've lost the reference point.
You can't see your own skills clearly because you're standing too close.
The curse of knowledge isn't just about teaching others.
It's about recognizing your own value.
When you realize that the things you do casually are things most people can't do at all, something shifts.
Not in an arrogant way.
You're not better than anyone else as a human being.
But you have skills.
Real, valuable, hard-won skills that took time and effort and pain to develop.
That webinar rattled me beforehand because I'd forgotten that.
I was so deep inside my own normal that I couldn't see it from the outside anymore.
Three hundred people reminded me.
They couldn't believe what they were seeing.
And I couldn't believe they couldn't believe it.
The Confidence You're Missing
Real confidence doesn't come from positive affirmations or fake-it-till-you-make-it bullshit.
It comes from evidence.
From knowing, really knowing, that you can do something difficult.
But you can't know that if you've convinced yourself that what you do is easy.
If you've normalized your expertise so thoroughly that you think anyone could do it.
They can't.
Most people couldn't do what you do.
Not without years of learning.
Not without the mistakes you made and learned from.
Not without developing the pattern recognition and intuition that you now take for granted.
When you break down your process and show it to someone else, you're not just helping them understand what you do.
You're reminding yourself.
You're stepping outside the curse of knowledge long enough to see what you've actually built.
And that recognition, that moment of "oh shit, I actually am good at this," that's where real confidence lives.
Not the loud, performative kind.
The quiet, unshakeable kind.
The kind that says, "I know what I'm capable of because I've seen the evidence."
Your Challenge
Don't just read this and nod and move on.
Actually do the exercise I described earlier.
Pick one process
Map it out completely
Show it to someone
Explain it to someone
Watch them struggle to comprehend how you make it look easy.
Then take that feeling.
That outside perspective.
And let it recalibrate how you see yourself.
You're not an imposter.
You're not faking it.
You're someone who's developed real expertise in something genuinely difficult.
The fact that it feels normal to you now doesn't make it less impressive.
It makes it more impressive.
Because that's what mastery looks like from the inside.
It looks like Tuesday.