The Art of Learning By Unlearning
How Familiarity Often Becomes Our Blind Spot
I recently had the privilege to enjoy a a beautiful spring morning in San Francisco where I met up with my regular birding group at Glen Canyon Park. We exchanged pleasantries and then made our way up the trail. Once we got to a clear landing, we went silent for 1 minute to just listen quietly: Songs of Spotted Towhees, Song Sparrows, Wilson’s Warblers, and Bewick Wrens permeated through the trees.
We then began to make the climb up the curving trails of the park when, about halfway up the trail on the curving hillside, people were pointing through the trees and so I pulled out my scope at saw what they were looking at: a couple of tiny Cooper's Hawk chicks poking their small heads above a smattering of well-organized branches, surveying their surroundings. I figured their mother was nearby, ensuring their safety while hunting for their next meal; a small rodent or bird for them to feast on.
As I pulled my eyes away from the telescope, I paused and simply admired the moment. Not only was this amazing phenomenon in nature happening, but I also realized that I hadn’t known about this incredible gem in the city in the first place. As someone who had grown up in San Francisco his entire life and thought he had a somewhat encyclopedic knowledge of the city, it turned out I didn't really know as much as I thought I did. I had driven by this park hundreds of times and even played soccer and baseball there as a youth, never knowing how deep and extensive this natural area was or how rich it was in wildlife.
It's said that humans only use about 10% of their brain capacity—but the real problem is that we think we know what the other 90% is being used for. We tend to mistake familiarity for understanding. In this case, my seemingly deep knowledge of the city gave me what I thought was an "edge" over those who didn't have the privilege to grow up here, only for me to realize that the more I learn, the less I actually know.
This brings me to the crux of this post: the idea of learning by "unlearning"—discarding outdated or incorrect knowledge to make room for new information and perspectives. By challenging our ingrained beliefs and assumptions, we can enable deeper understanding and adaptability in an ever-changing world.
Hiding in Plain Sight
Nestled between San Francisco's iconic Twin Peaks and the Excelsior neighborhood to its south, Glen Canyon is a surprisingly vast natural space with a wide variety of habitats. Before any modern humans made this place their home, Glen Canyon was part of a wild, biodiverse riparian ecosystem, carved through by Islais Creek—a water system that still exists, albeit very subtly, to this day.
By the time the Gold Rush was in full swing, the area became exploited for its stone by the Crocker Family, one of the earliest railroad barons of their day who owned vast amounts of land in San Francisco proper. Many of the hillside rocks were partially blasted for housing development. Today, the area is home to many restoration efforts for native plants and habitat. Again, this was NOT something I knew about until I was exposed to the trails of this park.
The Patterns Everywhere
We are all guilty of it, some more than others: It is this pattern where we mistake familiarity for understanding. This manifests in many areas of our lives, but it's perhaps most pronounced in fast-moving, complex fields like technology. Moore's Law describes how technological advancement doubles roughly every two years with microchips getting smaller each time, so how do even those of us who consider ourselves "experts" in this domain often find there's a vast gulf between the surface-level knowledge we think we possess and the depths we don't know?
With everything happening in the world of AI, it's hard to know what's what. The pace of change makes yesterday's expertise feel obsolete by tomorrow.
The same goes for running a business. You could attend business school and assume you have all the right pieces in place for building a product or service people want, but the realities of an unpredictable market will always surprise you. I didn't go to business school (yet?), but after working in the same field for over 10 years and nearly killing myself to learn all the same things an MBA student would, I discovered that theoretical knowledge and market reality are two very different beasts.
Even in our most intimate relationships, this pattern holds. I continue to learn new things about my parents—stories from their lives before they had children, perspectives I never knew they held, dreams they pursued that I was completely unaware of. People we think we know completely can still surprise us with hidden depths, just like that park I'd driven past countless times.
How to Reframe it From Frustration to Pleasant Surprise
The key shift I've made is reframing these moments of "not knowing what I thought I knew" from sources of frustration into pleasant surprises. Instead of beating myself up for being wrong or incomplete in my understanding, I've learned to treat these discoveries as gifts—evidence that the world is richer and more complex than I imagined.
This mindset change transforms ignorance from a personal failing into an opportunity for growth.
One technique I've been using is what is called the "thought challenge." This is a method practiced in many DBT circles for people, especially those with high levels of anxiety to use when they are undergoing a stressful moment or situation. When I have a negative reaction or make a quick assumption about something, I pause and ask myself: "What else could this mean? What other explanations are possible?"
Aside from the Glen Canyon birding trip, this also recently manifested itself on a day where I was picking my children up from their school. Instead of walking the few blocks home, I thought it would be a fun experience for us to take the bus home. There I was on the bus with my kids, when they decided to run down the aisle and then the bus driver immediately scolded me to "take care of my kids."
My immediate thought went straight to that I was a bad father and I didn’t know how to take care of my kids in a public setting. It wasn’t until arriving home and thinking about the situation where I was able to apply the thought challenge. I considered to myself: “Maybe the bus driver was having a difficult day and he just took it out on me?” “Maybe they were genuinely concerned about safety on the bus?” “Maybe they've seen too many accidents and were trying to prevent one?”
This simple practice creates space between our initial reaction and reality, allowing us to stay curious rather than defensive when our assumptions are challenged.
Your Mission, Should you Choose to Accept it…
As an homage to Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning that just came out this weekend, you might be asking yourself, “so what are you asking me to do?”
Well, I want to challenge you to be able to identify your own Glen Canyon Park moment, be it places, people, concepts, or fields you think you know well but haven't truly explored recently. Pick one and approach it with fresh eyes this week. Then see if you can identify something that has been hiding in plain sight.
The goal isn't to know everything. We all know that is impossible, especially in our complex, rapidly changing world. The goal is to stay curious about what we think we already know, to remain humble about the limits of our understanding, and to treat each moment of discovery as a gift rather than a failure.
Sometimes the most extraordinary things are hiding in plain sight, waiting for us to move beyond our assumptions and really look, just like those Cooper's Hawk chicks, nestled in their nest halfway up a hillside I'd driven past hundreds of times.
The world is full of wonders we haven't yet learned to see.