Learn To Avoid Or At Least Control, The "Valley Of Despair"

byrichardgb

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Updated 1 year ago

The Dunning-Kruger Effect On Confidence

David Dunning and Justin Kruger first wrote about a phenomenon that became known as the Dunning-Kruger effect in 1999 when attending Cornell University (USA).

There are a number of possible discussion points to do with the Dunning-Kruger effect. Here I discuss just one of them…

I’ve seen many new members at Wealthy Affiliate (me included), especially those relatively new to working online, go through what is a very normal emotional experience of feeling overwhelmed and perhaps anxious and sometimes even depressed. It can happen at any time, and here it usually seems to occur sometime between 2 and 10 months or so after joining.

I wrote a post about how I was a little overwhelmed at around the 3-month point. That was a few years ago now.

It's not just here of course... most of us will have have experienced the Dunning-Kruger effect in many different ways at one time or another.

You’d think that having an understanding of the world would help us understand even more about the world. Sometimes that is the way things work out, but in reality, it often does the opposite for most of us, at some point.

This has nothing to do with a low IQ or lack of intelligence. It does however have something to do with self-awareness.

What Is The Dunning-Kruger Effect?

The Dunning-Kruger effect occurs (arguably) as a natural error in our thinking (known as a cognitive bias) when we’re processing and interpreting information in the world around us. There's a bit of gobbledygook for you!

Please read on… it’s not all so “ho-hum”…

If you study the diagram above it reflects the obvious idea that anything we do, that's new to us, normally begins with a naturally low level of competence and a relatively low state of confidence.

There are various implications… as I've already said, here I discuss only one…

To get started at anything we want, we often anticipate an outcome with some excitement and develop a little confidence in our ability to handle whatever it is we’ve taken on.

This kind of confidence is motivating and helps us get started,,,

It's not a bad thing...

With that confidence, we often make some great early gains towards our objectives, which builds our confidence even more.

Exaggerating a little to make the point, some of us begin to think we’re invincible perhaps.

The Dunning-Kruger effect suggests that the resulting emotional reaction to our increasing confidence can distort our belief in our own abilities.

First, we can become super-confident or overconfident in our own abilities. This natural increase in confidence becomes even more motivational and therefore helps keep us going.

Then comes the day when we discover there’s still a lot to learn or do.

We soldier on until we realise we’re trying to do too much at once or perhaps realise we’re creating chaos by implementing half-learned ideas…

… and, shortly thereafter, we experience a kind of emotional backlash leading to a drop (sometimes an enormous drop) in our confidence level.

This is often the time when people are tempted to give up trying.

Those who move on past this point usually become much more realistic, and deliberate, in search of greater competence, and eventually achieve what they want.

The more aware we are of this phenomenon, the easier it is to recognise, understand and overcome.

I hope this post serves to help if and when you need a little support, or for you to help others if you notice they are going through this.

The Dunning-Kruger Effect In Action

I’ve been through this many times…

I could give you perhaps a few hundred examples! Here’s just one…

This takes us back to the late 1970s. At 26 years old, I was relatively fit and strong with good balance. I’d been involved in many different sports over the years, and my passion at the time was sailing.

Windsurfing (or boardsailing) had been in the UK for a couple of years by then, and I discovered that through my work’s social club I could get free lessons.

Living close to a place called Hayling Island, near Portsmouth in the south of England, the lessons were popular and they couldn’t fit me in for 6 weeks. So during the waiting period, I read everything I could find about windsurfing.

Before I ever stepped on a board, I was an expert of course!

I knew all the parts of the board and its rig and how to put them together and set them up well. I knew how it all worked and how to sail it.

I was capable of boring any friend willing to listen to my newfound knowledge.

I know. You’re probably not arrogant like I was.

Here’s the point: I became more and more excited and confident about my new venture before it even started.

Then the first day arrived. It was a perfect Saturday for beginners. Very low wind and no waves on a small safe lake. After about an hour of land-based instruction, most of which I already knew, we ventured out. The other 5 people in the lesson instantly fell into the lake.

Now, I’m sure you’d like to hear that I made the biggest splash. Well, I’m sorry to disappoint. I didn’t! At least, not that day anyway.

Yours truly managed to step onto the board in the shallows and stay upright. In fact, I didn’t fall in once during several hours of wobbling about on that first day.

I stayed dry until the instructor deliberately pushed me into the water. He forced an exercise of clambering back onboard in deep water, raising the sail, and getting underway again. Even that went well!

So far, so good. This was easy, so what on earth was there to learn on the second day?

If you look back at the Dunning-Kruger effect diagram, I reckon I’d started the day somewhere on the way up the slope of Mount Stupid and by the end of Saturday I’d reached the Peak…

Then came Sunday morning with a little more wind.

When I say a little, I do mean just a little more wind. As a sailor, I was familiar with the Beaufort Scale. It’s a standard used to indicate approximate wind strength or speed. On Saturday, the Beaufort measurement had been "Force 1", which indicates a wind speed of up to about 3 miles per hour (mph). On Sunday it was measured at “Force 2" (up to about 7 mph). If you looked closely at trees you’d have seen the leaves beginning to move!

Since we were likely to be moving a little faster on Sunday, the lessons were moved to a larger area of the open Chichester harbour near the northern end of Hayling Island; still very safe, but with space for us to try to avoid crashing into each other.

My experience on Sunday was completely different from Saturday!

I stepped onto the board in the shallows, raised the rig, started to pull the sail towards me as I had done the day before, and overbalanced forward, landing face-first on top of my water-bound sail. The slightly stronger wind had taken me by surprise and taken my sail and me with it.

OK… I wasn’t beaten, of course. I sorted myself out (still in the shallows), spent a few minutes manoeuvring the board and rig ready to try again and stepped back onto the board.

This time I was ready for the wind and leant back a little in anticipation of its power. I was underway for all of maybe 3 seconds before overbalancing backwards! The few seconds of sailing forward were encouraging but had taken me out of my depth. This was when my learning really began.

While others had spent most of Saturday falling both forwards and backwards, climbing back on, and trying again, I hadn’t.

They were mostly used to falling in by now and happily climbed back on and raised their sails. For me, it was hard work. After about an hour, I was exhausted from the effort of climbing back onto my board, standing up and trying to raise the sail.

Others were making faster progress. I needed a rest, was rescued and towed back ashore.

On Saturday I mostly stayed dry, then on Sunday I was the first to be rescued!

I was pretty fed up. I’d slid down the slope from the “Peak of Mount Stupid” to the “Valley of Despair” in no time at all.

There I was, sitting on the shore watching others, considering whether to go and struggle out of my wetsuit and leave when the instructor (George) came and sat down next to me.

He said, “That looked exhausting.” “You seem to be fighting to get your balance.” “You’re nearly there.” “Relax a little and learn to trust the wind." "Don’t overthink it”.

More importantly, he said I’d probably find it easier if the wind was a little stronger (which seemed counter-intuitive at the time) and he went on to explain that there wasn’t enough wind to balance against my weight using a small learner’s sail. He offered me his own rig to try after lunch, with a bigger sail.

In addition, he reiterated that if I wanted to become competent at windsurfing, I’d need to get used to many different wind and wave conditions, and go through a similar learning curve for each increase in wind strength and become an expert at getting started again whenever I fell off.

He suggested that the more often I fell backwards in the early days, the faster I’d become competent; falling in backwards showed that I was beginning to find a good stance in relation to the wind.

He made me realise the obvious... I needed to experience imbalance in all sorts of wind and wave conditions for my body and mind to learn how to balance and sail a windsurfer well.

Now back to the Dunning-Kruger diagram. George’s words got me started on moving up the shallower “Slope of Enlightenment"…

… which led, almost a year to the day later, to my first international windsurfing race.

6 Things To Do To Avoid Or Control The “Valley Of Despair” Experience

1. Realise that at some point you will almost certainly experience the “Valley Of Despair”;
2. The “Valley Of Despair” is not real. It reflects an imbalanced emotional reaction to a prior imbalance in confidence - an overconfidence in how things were going;
3. Be self-aware and honest enough with yourself to notice what is happening to you… that’s often enough to remain in control;
4. If you feel overwhelmed, slow down and take time out to write a list of the things that you’re wanting to get done or to learn more about;
5. Prioritise that list. Get organised;
6. If you need help at any time… reach out to the community here… or if you prefer reach out to a member or a friend that you trust to help you get back on track.

The Bottom Line

The Dunning-Kruger effect is a well-known bias in testing and measuring self-awareness. That’s enough of that…

But it can help us become self-aware enough to know when we need to get better organised, or simply take stock and figure out the next steps.

I hope you feel that you’re great at something, or even lots of things… but realistic enough to notice when something's not working well.

Realise that being great at one aspect of a subject can lead to feeling more competent at another aspect than you really are.

If you think you’re great at something, it could be because you’re not good enough to see any flaws.

When in doubt, ask for help!

If you have anything to add or to ask, please respond with a comment...
:-)
Richard