Round 2, Day 4
Wednesday, February 18, 2026
How often do you get into a conversation and realize halfway through that the person you’re talking to has no idea what you’re telling them?
If you’ve been following this blog, you might remember an earlier post called “The Curse of Knowledge.” It’s a concept from Chip and Dan Heath’s book Made to Stick — the idea that when we know a subject so well, we have a genuinely hard time remembering what it was like not to know it. We start explaining something, we see the confused look on someone’s face, and we can’t figure out why they don’t get it. It seems so obvious to us. But that’s the curse. Our expertise has erased our memory of being a beginner.
I’ve run into this so many times since I first read about it that it deserves another post. Because tonight I want to connect it to something bigger.
Clarity Makes You Indispensable
I’ve been reading Linchpin by Seth Godin, and he talks about what makes a person indispensable. There are a lot of answers to that question, but here’s one I think gets overlooked: the ability to make your message crystal clear.
Think about it. If you’re not clear about what you know, what you work on, and what you do — how are you going to relay it to others? How are you going to work with excellence? How are you going to make sure everyone is actually on the same page?
The answer is, you really can’t.
You can be the smartest person in the room. You can have the best ideas, the deepest knowledge, the most experience. But if you can’t communicate it in a way that makes someone else say, “Oh yeah, I know exactly what you’re talking about” — then your knowledge is trapped inside your own head. And trapped knowledge doesn’t help anyone.
The linchpin isn’t just the person who knows the most. It’s the person who can translate what they know into something other people can use.
The Argument That Wasn’t
Let me give you two examples from my own life of how badly this can go.
I was in a meeting a while back, and I kept making the same point over and over. The person across from me kept responding, and I kept pushing back. I was convinced they weren’t hearing me.
Then it hit me: they were agreeing with me. The whole time.
I was so locked into my own way of saying it that I couldn’t hear them saying the same thing back in different words. I was arguing with an ally because I was too focused on my message to actually listen to theirs.
And if that wasn’t humbling enough — I’ve done the same thing at home. I remember a conversation with my bride where I was getting increasingly frustrated, and she finally looked at me and said, “We’re saying the same thing, aren’t we?”
Yes. We were.
The problem wasn’t that we disagreed. The problem was that I couldn’t get over myself long enough to hear how the person in front of me needed to receive the information.
The 7-40 Application
This matters to me in the context of this challenge because I want to be an encouragement to people — not a source of confusion. I want to be crystal clear about what I’m doing, about my motivations, about my struggles. I want to meet people where they are, not where I am.
That’s the real skill. Not just knowing something, but translating it. Not just having the answer, but delivering it in a way that actually lands.
Whether it’s at work, at home, in your writing, or in your relationships — the question isn’t “Do I know what I’m talking about?” The question is “Can the person I’m talking to understand what I’m saying?”
If the answer is no, the problem isn’t them. It’s you.
Say it so they hear it. That’s what makes you indispensable.
Day 44 of 280. Clarity is a superpower.
The 740 Challenge 