#29: Don’t know what you don’t know
It is essential not to profess to know, or to seem to know, or to accept that someone else knows, that which is unknown. Almost without exception, the things that end up coming back to haunt you are the things you pretended to understand early on but didn’t. At virtually every stage of even the most successful software projects, there are large numbers of very important things that are unknown. It is acceptable—even mandatory—to articulate your ignorance, so that no one misjudges the state of things, how much is still unknown. If you don’t cultivate and disseminate a “lucid ignorance,” disaster will surely befall you.
Pseudo-order is one maladaptive defense against uncertainty.
Human nature is such that ...
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