What If You're Wrong About the Most Important Things?
What if the thing holding you back isn’t what you don’t know?
What if it’s what you’re absolutely certain you do know? Most people assume mistakes come from ignorance.
They don’t.
Many of the biggest mistakes you’ll ever make come from certainty.
A programmer assumes a function will always receive valid data.
A writer assumes readers understand what they’re trying to say.
A musician assumes listeners care about technical ability.
An entrepreneur assumes customers want the product they’re building.
Then reality arrives. The software crashes. The story confuses readers. The song gets skipped. The product doesn’t sell.
The problem wasn’t effort.
The problem wasn’t intelligence.
The problem was an assumption that never got questioned.
Here’s the paradox:
The more obvious something seems, the less likely you are to examine it.
And the less you examine it, the more dangerous it becomes. Because assumptions are invisible. You don’t see them. You see the conclusions they produce.
By the time an assumption becomes a problem, you’ve usually forgotten it was an assumption at all.
You treat it like a fact.
That’s where trouble begins.
The Hidden Source of Most Problems
One of the first lessons programming teaches you is that software rarely fails for the reason you think.
A bug appears on screen.
Users complain.
Something breaks.
The temptation is to focus on the visible failure.
But experienced programmers know the visible failure is usually the symptom. The real problem sits underneath.
Most bugs originate from assumptions.
The developer assumes a user will enter information correctly.
The developer assumes a value will never be empty.
The developer assumes people will follow instructions.
The developer assumes a feature will only be used one way.
Then somebody does something unexpected.
The assumption collapses.
The software follows.
The bug wasn’t created when the system crashed. The bug was created the moment the assumption went unquestioned. This isn’t a programming problem. It’s a human problem.
Every decision you make rests on assumptions.
Every prediction you make rests on assumptions.
Every plan you create rests on assumptions.
The quality of your results depends on whether those assumptions match reality. When they do, things work. When they don’t, things break. Not because you’re incapable. Because you’re operating from a false premise.
Most people spend their lives solving problems created by assumptions they never knew they were making.
Why Assumptions Feel So Safe
Assumptions exist for a reason.
Without them, life would be impossible. You assume your car will start. You assume the grocery store will be open. You assume gravity will continue working tomorrow.
Assumptions allow you to move through life without constantly reevaluating everything.
They’re efficient.
They’re useful.
The problem is that the same mechanism that helps you function also creates blind spots. Which we’ve touched on in a past issue.
When something becomes familiar, you stop questioning it. What begins as a possibility becomes a belief. The belief becomes a certainty. The certainty becomes invisible.
At that point, you no longer examine it.
You build on top of it.
That’s why smart people often make obvious mistakes. It’s not because they lack knowledge. It’s because they stop challenging the knowledge they already have.
Experience creates confidence.
Confidence creates certainty.
Certainty creates assumptions.
And assumptions create blind spots. The danger isn’t ignorance. The danger is believing you’ve already figured everything out.
Writers Make Assumptions Constantly
Every writer knows something their reader doesn’t.
That’s unavoidable.
The problem begins when the writer forgets this fact. You know why your character made a decision. The reader doesn’t. You know the emotional significance of a scene. The reader doesn’t. You know the meaning behind a symbol. The reader doesn’t.
You know everything.
The reader knows almost nothing.
Yet writers regularly assume readers possess information that exists only in the writer’s head.
That’s why so many stories feel confusing. Not because the writer lacks talent. Because the writer assumes clarity.
Readers experience stories for the first time.
Writers experience them for the hundredth.
Those are completely different perspectives. A writer reads a chapter and sees depth, context, and meaning. A reader reads the same chapter and sees only what’s on the page.
The gap between those experiences creates countless problems.
Characters feel inconsistent. Motivations feel weak. Emotional moments feel unearned. Not because the story lacks those things. Because the writer assumed they were obvious.
The strongest writers understand this.
They don’t ask:
“Does this make sense to me?”
They ask:
“Will this make sense to someone who has never seen it before?”
That’s a harder question.
It’s also the right question.
Because communication isn’t measured by what you intended. It’s measured by what the audience understood.
Creatives Often Assume the Audience Wants What They Want
This problem extends far beyond writing.
Every creative discipline suffers from it.
Musicians assume listeners care about technical complexity.
Writers assume readers care about worldbuilding details.
Developers assume users care about elegant code.
Artists assume audiences care about the creative process.
Often they don’t.
Creators spend so much time around their work that they lose sight of why people engage with it in the first place. The audience doesn’t experience your work the way you do.
You see the effort.
They see the result.
You see the years of practice.
They see the final performance.
You see the technical achievement.
They see how it made them feel.
A guitarist may spend six months mastering a difficult solo.
The listener remembers the melody.
A novelist may spend years building an elaborate fictional world.
The reader remembers the characters.
A developer may obsess over architecture.
The user remembers whether the app solved their problem.
This doesn’t mean craft is unimportant. It means audience experience matters more. The assumption that people value the same things you value creates enormous disconnects.
Many creators struggle because they’re optimizing for themselves rather than for the people they’re trying to serve.
The solution isn’t guessing.
The solution is feedback.
Feedback is reality testing.
Every comment.
Every sale.
Every unsubscribe.
Every review.
Every skipped song.
Every abandoned project.
Reality communicating where your assumptions align with the truth and where they don’t.
Progress Begins When You Question the Obvious
Most people think progress comes from finding better answers.
Often, it comes from asking better questions. Every meaningful breakthrough begins with doubt. What if I’m wrong? What if my interpretation is incomplete? What if the obvious explanation isn’t the correct one?
Programming teaches this lesson repeatedly.
When experienced developers encounter a problem, they don’t immediately defend their assumptions.
They challenge them.
They investigate.
They test.
They gather evidence.
They ask:
What am I assuming?
How do I know it’s true?
What evidence supports it?
What evidence contradicts it?
Notice what isn’t happening. They’re not trying to prove themselves right. They’re trying to find reality. That’s a completely different objective.
Most people approach problems looking for confirmation. They search for evidence supporting existing beliefs.
Programmers learn to search for evidence that destroys them.
Because the fastest path to the truth often lies in disproving your assumptions.
Imagine applying this approach to creative work.
“My audience doesn’t buy products.”
How do you know?
“My writing isn’t good enough.”
Based on what evidence?
“Nobody wants long-form content anymore.”
Who told you?
Many limitations survive because they’re never examined. They aren’t facts. They’re assumptions wearing the disguise of facts.
The moment you challenge them, new possibilities emerge.
The Assumption Audit
Whenever you encounter a recurring frustration, ask yourself a simple question:
What assumption am I making?
Most people stop too early.
Don’t.
Keep digging.
Suppose your newsletter isn’t growing.
You might assume people aren’t interested in the topic.
Maybe that’s true.
Maybe it isn’t.
Perhaps the headline isn’t strong enough.
Perhaps the distribution is weak.
Perhaps positioning is unclear.
Perhaps readers don’t understand who the content is for.
Each possibility contains a different assumption.
Each assumption leads to a different solution.
The same applies everywhere.
If your music isn’t connecting.
If your products aren’t selling.
If your stories aren’t landing.
If your goals feel stuck.
Ask yourself:
What am I treating as a fact that might only be an assumption?
The answer often reveals more than the problem itself.
Most frustrations exist one layer above the real issue.
Symptoms live on the surface.
Assumptions live underneath.
Find the assumption, and you often find the source.
The Most Dangerous Words In Any Discipline
The most dangerous words in programming aren’t:
“This is impossible.”
They’re:
“I already know.”
The same applies to writing.
Music.
Business.
Technology.
Life.
The moment you stop questioning your assumptions, growth begins slowing down. Not because you’ve reached your limits. Because you’ve stopped examining them.
Assumptions create invisible boundaries. You stop exploring alternatives. You stop testing ideas. You stop investigating possibilities. You stop learning.
The irony is that assumptions often begin as useful shortcuts.
They save time. They reduce complexity. They help you move faster. But over time, shortcuts become blind spots. And blind spots become limitations.
The people who continue growing aren’t necessarily the smartest people in the room.
They’re often the most curious.
They’re willing to question beliefs others take for granted.
They’re willing to challenge conclusions that feel obvious.
They’re willing to investigate ideas they’ve accepted for years.
Most breakthroughs don’t happen because someone learns something new.
They happen because someone discovers something old was wrong.
That’s the paradox.
The biggest mistakes happen when you stop questioning what you believe to be true.
The section about writers forgetting the reader only sees what’s on the page was excellent. I think a lot of us mistake intention for communication. We know the emotional logic behind a scene because we’ve lived with it for months, but the reader encounters it cold. That gap creates so many weak moments in fiction. I also appreciated the larger point underneath all of this: humility is part of the creative process. The willingness to question your own certainty is what keeps the work alive. Wonderful insights here for writers Idris Elijah, thank you and have a great weekend!
I love the point about musicians assuming listeners care about technical complexity. Earlier on I spent so much time trying to impress people with layers, transitions and production tricks. Meanwhile the songs people actually remembered were the simplest ones emotionally. The ones with a strong melody or a line that felt human. AI is making me think about this even more lately too. Technical polish is becoming easier to fake. Taste and emotional judgment really aren’t. Thank you Idris Elijah for this thought provoking topic and enjoy your weekend!