How to be a
Professional
Bawbag

Lesson 03 · Unlicensed expertise

Act Like You Know Best

Why waste years learning when confidence takes minutes?

The professional method

  1. Arrive halfway through the conversation.
  2. Correct the person who does this for a living.
  3. Explain the obvious bit very slowly.
  4. Blame the result on people not listening.

What you’re actually learning

Confidence is useful, but it is not evidence. The less we understand a subject, the harder it can be to see the size of what we do not know.

The professional bawbag solves this by treating every new fact as confirmation that they were basically right all along.

The clever bit hiding underneath

This lesson is about calibration: matching the strength of your claim to the strength of your knowledge. Real expertise usually sounds more careful because experts can see the complications.