Turn your excitement into specificity

A good way to approximate how engaged someone is with an issue is by how specific they can be in their description of it.

Whenever someone can clearly and confidently peel the onion several layers deep — articulating the nuances of what makes an issue relevant, interesting, difficult, and worthwhile, it’s because they’ve made some meaningful effort to explore the problem space and wrestle with trying to address it.

All of this is in contrast to general excitement — the initial surge of interest we sometimes experience after hearing about an interesting idea.

For example, I just attended a talk discussing the regulation of Artificial Intelligence technologies and heard enough to be deeply interested in the topic. What I can’t yet do is speak to all the relevant details that one would need to consider when trying to navigate and make progress with regulation in this domain — I’m excited but I’m not yet engaged.

The difference between excitement and engagement is the difference between liking the idea of driving because it’s cool and knowing how to drive because it’s pragmatic.

The former might feel good but only the latter manage to get anywhere.

Turn your excitement into specificity and seek others who routinely do the same. `