There is a cognitive bias called the Curse of Knowledge.
It works like this: once you know something, you can no longer imagine what it felt like not to know it. Your expertise becomes invisible to you, and that invisibility is exactly what makes you a terrible teacher.
Most people who write instructions, shoot tutorials, or build courses don't know they're cursed (yeah, don’t turn around but The Nun is right behind you).
"The key to good decision making is not knowledge. It is understanding. We are swimming in the former. We are desperately lacking in the latter." - Malcolm Gladwell
My mom and I recently worked through a sewing pattern purchased from Etsy. The seller clearly knew what they were doing because the final bag was amazingly beautiful. The problem is that they wrote the directions for someone who already knew what the hell they were actually doing.
The two of us had to read through the instructions multiple times before we could even start. For a project that was supposed to be fun, it became frustrating real fast.
Then, just recently, there was this “Getting Started” video by Cavalry that I watched. And if I hadn't spent Q1 2026 building enough basic video editing knowledge to recognize the general shape of what was happening on screen, I would have been completely lost.
They flew through steps without pausing, without zooming in, without acknowledging that a beginner exists on the other side of the camera. Easy for them while being a massive bewilderment for me.
"Bad checklists are vague and imprecise. They are too long; they are hard to use; they are impractical. Good checklists, on the other hand, are precise. They are efficient, to the point, and easy to use even in the most difficult situations." - Atul Gawande
One step. One action. One photo. Every time.
A summary of steps is not helpful when you need a literal, here's-exactly-where-to-put-the-needle, here's-what-it-looks-like-when-it's-right, here's-what-to-do-if-it's-wrong instruction set.
This is how we approach much of our AI content at Thoughts Brewing → whether it's a blog post, a course, a video, or a live cohort. We assume you haven't done this before. We assume the thing that seems obvious to us is invisible to you. We assume the step we're tempted to skip is the one you actually need.
Because that assumption has been right, every single time.
Who cares!! Embrace it. Own it.
Show the mess. Then show the fix. Then show how the beautiful embroidered patch you added to cover that hole looks better than the original plan anyway.
Mistakes are part of being human and a big, big part of learning.
(photos below of the finished bag, messed up patch and all)
Hiding them from your instructions is another form of the Curse…the assumption that the reader's experience should look as polished as your finished product, rather than as human as your process actually was.
"We learn by example and by direct experience because there are real limits to the adequacy of verbal instruction." - Malcolm Gladwell