Ask The Stupid Question

The person you think "just got it" asked a hundred stupid questions while you were protecting your image—and that's why they understand and you don't

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Someone in the meeting mentions a concept you don’t understand.

You nod anyway.

Not because you don’t want to know. Because asking would reveal you don’t know. And revealing you don’t know would make you look stupid.

The person next to you is nodding too. They’re probably confused also. But you can’t know that. So you both nod. And you both stay confused.

Richard Feynman won a Nobel Prize in physics. His colleagues remember him stopping presentations mid-sentence. “What do you mean by that?” “I don’t understand this part.” “Can you say that simpler?”

They thought he was testing them. He wasn’t. He actually didn’t understand. And he refused to pretend.

That refusal is why he understood quantum mechanics better than almost anyone alive. Not because he was naturally smarter. Because he was willing to look stupid in front of people who thought they were smarter.

Here’s what you’re trading: protecting your image for two minutes in a meeting. Sacrificing understanding for the next two years.