What if I told you that you don’t know as much as you think you do about life? “Pff, Mr. Cash Machine,” you’d probably respond. “I’m well aware of my biases.”
The trap you might be falling into here: Letting your ego take the driver’s seat…and your ego is a fragile 16-year-old boy who is about to take over that 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California for a spin. Instead, you could focus on improving this mental model: Circle of Competence.
What is your circle of competence?
On its basic level, from the wonderful folks at Farnam Street a circle of competence is having “true knowledge of a complex territory.” It’s a challenge to discern a discrete checklist of your area of competence, but one important framework: “…if you don’t have at least a few years and a few failures under your belt, you cannot consider yourself competent in a circle.”
To know you have a circle of competence, here are some things you can look for:
You know exactly what you don’t know
You know where to locate, and when to pull in additional information to make a decision with complete understanding. You can draw upon a variety of information sources, understand their respective limitations, and can adjust your perspective accordingly
You can anticipate and respond to objections (meaning you’ve already done the work and have enough experience to understand what objections come up)
You have a lot of options when dealing with problems
But, please understand. Your mastery of something doesn’t come from a couple months of work or a really good Twitter thread. It requires dedication and mastery.
So how do you build and maintain a circle of competency?
We can break this down into this mantra: Know that everything is fluid and needs to be continually worked on. Competency isn’t a destination, but a journey.
Farnam Street breaks down three key practices to build a circle of competency:
Curiosity and a desire to learn: Always be learning, but make sure you balance between learning on your own through experience and learning from others (books, articles, and conversations are important).
Monitoring: Keep a record in key areas you currently have, or want to attain, a circle of competence. Be honest about your own limitations. Ego can be the enemy here. Simply having a record of a decision, what went into the decision, and the results can be a powerful tool.
Feedback: You need objective external feedback. You need people you can trust to observe and give relevant feedback on your competence. This could be someone in your circle of competence or perhaps hiring a coach.
So…I understand my circle(s)…what now?
You must now, young Jedi, understand when you are and when you aren’t in your circle of competence.
When you recognize your own limitations, you can know when you are and aren’t operating in a circle of competence. “In any given situation, there are people who have a circle, who have put in the time and effort to really understand the information,” writes the Farnam Street team.
I’ll leave you with this. There are three key areas that Farnam Street notes are important when you’re operating outside your circle of competence:
Learn the basics of the circle you’re in, but keep mindful on the tendency to have unwarranted confidence in something with easily accessible information.
Talk with someone who has a strong circle of competence in the area.
Use other broad mental models to refine your limited understanding of the field. This email series should help you there!
In case you missed it…
Here’s an overview of Mental Model 1: The Map is not the Land