| author | title | date | image | authorImage | tags |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Trevor Lane |
Productize Yourself, Special Knowledge Not Required. |
11/29/2021 |
interest, knowledge, productize |
I recently wrote a post about one of Naval Ravikant's tweets:
Specifically, the post was about what it actually means to "Productize Yourself." I described "Productizing Yourself" as the process of transforming interests into scalable forms. (e.g. tweeting about something you recently learned.)
One comment that I received suggested that "transforming interest" was an incorrect explanation. Rather, that transforming "special knowledge" is what was originally meant and is what's needed to participate in the process of productizing yourself.
Here's the comment in full:
No. It does not mean this: "transforming your interests".
It does mean transforming your special knowledge into a product,
and (with the help of zero marginal cost) replicating this knowledge
(what naval call leverage).
Its not about you interests or hobbies.
This back and forth could easily be taken as a conversation about semantics wherein the differences between interests and special knowledge are meticulously plucked apart. That conversation is not going to be part of my day.
Instead of doing the impossible (completely understanding a comment on the internet) let's assume the comment author felt that mere interest is not enough. Let’s also assume that by "special knowledge" the author meant something along the lines of advanced or expert knowledge. This is how I interpreted the comment, not that it matters.
What does matter is the point that interest alone is enough. Specialized or advanced knowledge is not required to successfully productize yourself. In fact, having only interest in a topic, or even an interest that has just sparked can actually be advantageous.
All of the knicks, scrapes and bruises involved in a growing interest are top of mind. The gotchas, the unexpected bits, the counterintuitive concepts are all fresh. You are in a prime position to talk about what you've just experienced, because you've just experienced it.
In fact, beginners (who are a few steps ahead of you) can often teach concepts as well as experts. Sometimes this is called the curse of knowledge. It's when experts are worse teachers because they forget what it's like to be a beginner.
C.S. Lewis described this phenomenon quite well:
“It often happens that two schoolboys can solve difficulties in their work for one another better than the master can. […] The fellow-pupil can help more than the master because he knows less. The difficulty we want him to explain is one he has recently met. The expert met it so long ago he has forgotten. He sees the whole subject, by now, in a different light that he cannot conceive what is really troubling the pupil; he sees a dozen other difficulties which ought to be troubling him but aren’t.”
This isn't to say that experts are always poor teachers. Some experts are fantastic teachers. Take Bill Nye literally talking about watching paint dry, for example. Captivating, no?
The point is that mere interest is enough to begin the process of productizing yourself. In some cases, it's even an advantage. Productize yourself, even if you only have interests and no special knowledge.
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