The Expert Trap and How To Avoid It
The Expert Trap and How To Avoid It
The science of why your new habit attempts fail... and what to do instead
June 14, 2026
“In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few.”
\- Shunryu Suzuki
The beauty of what I do is that I’m constantly learning, whether from my colleagues, our clients or my own studies.
Last month, while researching the micro-rituals edition, I came across a piece on Marc Benioff of Salesforce. It was the first time I’d heard of the Zen Buddhist concept of shoshin, or ‘beginner's mind’. This is the practice of approaching your work with the openness of someone who doesn't yet know the answer.
Regular readers will know that I've long believed the best leaders see themselves as explorers, not experts and so the concept of beginner’s mind resonated with me. I needed to understand more.
Shoshin is rooted in the Zen Buddhist tradition, and Shunryu Suzuki (who brought Zen practice to the West in the 1960s) made it a central idea of his teaching. In Zen, the purpose of practice isn't to become an expert. It's the opposite: to systematically dismantle the certainties that accumulate with experience and return, again and again, to a state of genuine openness. Monks train for years not to acquire knowledge but to unlearn the habit of thinking they already know.
I’m glad I went down the rabbit hole, as there’s an important lesson there for all of us. The world of work is going to go through seismic changes, and the leaders who think they have all the answers are the ones who'll struggle most with what's coming.
THE SCIENCE
It’s worth understanding what is actually happening in your brain as you accumulate experience.
Your prefrontal cortex (your executive function, responsible for clear thinking, strategic judgement, and evaluating new information) becomes increasingly efficient at pattern recognition. That efficiency is genuinely valuable. But there's a hidden cost. Your brain begins filtering out information that doesn't match established patterns before you've consciously registered it.
Neuroscientists call this ‘top-down processing’: your prior knowledge starts to dominate over what's actually in front of you. The more expert you become, the stronger that filter gets. It’s not so much that your brain plateaus, it’s more that it defaults to what it’s learned through experience, even if it’s presented with new information.
There's a second mechanism worth understanding. Your default mode network (the brain system most active during reflection and ‘white space’ moments) is where important new connections are made. You know what they feel like: you’re walking in the park or in the shower and seemingly out of the blue you connect the dots. You can see a solution to the big problem where you’d been stuck for days.
But it gets suppressed when you're executing on certainty, defaulting to your autopilot.
A beginner's mind, in cognitive terms, is a wonderful way of keeping this network active.
THE PROOF
Well this section of the newsletter is proof of the power of the default mode network, as I ended up rewriting it based on an unexpected connection!
So last night (I’m writing this on Friday) I was listening to the final part of Rick Rubin’s conversation with David Senra, host of the Founders podcast.
Senra described his admiration for James Dyson and that what blew him away was Dyson’s incredible curiosity about how to make a product better. He didn’t use the phrase beginner's mind when talking about this, but that was the connection I made as I heard his words.
I’m being simplistic for the sake of brevity, but in essence Dyson looked at the vacuum cleaner, looked at technology the entire industry had accepted as solved, and asked why it had to work that way at all. Over the following five years he built 5,127 prototypes before arriving at the cyclone separation system that became the Dyson vacuum. He went on to build a company now worth over £4 billion by adopting that same mindset continually.
That for me is the essence of a beginner's mind - Dyson managed to turn away from the lure of established expertise and look at a familiar object as if he'd never seen it before.
THE APPLICATION
Let me be clear, like everything else I advocate for, a beginner’s mind is a trainable skill.
It all starts with self-awareness - switching off the auto-pilot and recognising those areas where experience is potentially compromising your performance rather than enhancing it.
I’m conscious that trying to adopt a beginner’s mind can feel overwhelming, so the simplest thing you can take from Dyson is the question: how can this be better?
This is the power of curiosity made simple - identify those ways of working that have become habitual and ask yourself the question. Not from the perspective of performative transformation, but from the perspective of a scientist – a question as a genuine inquiry.
If we return to the original spark for this week’s Prime Performance, Marc Benioff meditates every morning to start his day the right way. Whatever you think about meditation, the mechanism is worth understanding: he's deliberately creating white space to set him up for the day.
How many of you are reaching for your phones before your eyes are fully open? How many of you are immediately feeling overwhelmed and wired as you stare at the emails and whatsapp messages?
Your default mode network needs space to operate. Protect the white space. Go explore… with a beginner’s mind. Beginner doesn’t mean inexperienced. It means open.
Go well.
J.
🔥 LIVE BETTER, LEAD BETTER
The best content I researched this week:
1. If this week's edition resonated, this Finding Mastery podcast on the psychology of awareness is a natural next step. Molecular biologist and mindfulness expert Jon Kabat-Zinn shares what it takes to stay focused and present in a world of distraction.
2. Why movement is a biological necessity, explained in one slide by Dr Mark Hyman. It’s also hugely important for your cognitive health.
3. A beginner’s mind requires clarity of thought. A good night’s rest is one of the best investments you can make in pursuit of this, so the sleep toolkit from Huberman Lab Essentials is a must.
4. Finally, 5 slides from a neuroscientist that do a brilliant job of explaining why building new habits is hard… and why you may be giving up at just the wrong time.
Share this with a fellow leader - we’re stronger together.
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