A great farmer bought a field, worked it diligently, and made it produce abundantly.
He then bought another field, worked it partially, and cursed it, because it did not produce abundantly.
In education, there’s a concept called “The Curse of Knowledge.”
As you achieve a level of expertise, you forget the struggles of learning all the concepts that built that expertise.
An engineer may forget how hard it was to learn algebra because they use calculus all the time.
This “curse” makes it difficult to relate to new learners, and also to learn new things ourselves because we become accustomed to things “just coming naturally.”
In business, I’d say there is “The Curse of Success.”
After we “make it,” we often forget how hard the things that now seem trivial to us were to learn and do.
And when we expand into a new market, or a new marketing channel, or a new platform, we forget that we still have to do the work.
People don’t know you, don’t like you, don’t trust you. And forgetting you have to earn that in new environments actually hurts you. It comes off as entitled and arrogant.
The soil in the new field doesn’t care how well you prepared the soil in the last one.
Prior success may have given you a better understanding of how to use the plow.
But you still have to put your hand on it.
