Are you a naive enthusiast, an oversimplifying populariser, a gooroo, or a curmudgeon?

Benjamin P. Taylor
2 min readJan 12, 2021

These are the ego traps that lie in wait as you enter into any powerful field of knowledge.

- The naive enthusiast thinks that this new thing they’ve found will change the world! And is incredibly frustrated that they can’t be allowed to run wild and just apply it to make *everything* better. They don’t want to hear about the history of what happened the last seventeen times that was tried!

- The populariser wants to get a following — they count the ‘likes’ and the retweets, they don’t want to hear about the real complexities of the issues — that would get in the way of being an inspiration!

- The gooroo is in the business of collecting followers too, but needs to make sure they are locked in to the one true way of thinking. They have to poison the ground for all the other theories and ideas.

- And the curmudgeon is heavily invested in telling everyone else that they are wrong, where they are wrong, and in excruciating detail *how* they are wrong.

Each of the types will poison the field and put others off, if you’re not careful.

I use this as a warning to myself to stay in the middle ground when I can!

You can access the model here: https://media-exp1.licdn.com/dms/document/C561FAQE3OGbtql135A/feedshare-document-pdf-analyzed/0/1609315959988?e=1610560800&v=beta&t=NSIwloj0Fz_BPufkA9dmmJQx3oD7hNZHOZUpbu1kE6M

Which is your most likely position to occupy? Which one irritates you the most?

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