I had a math teacher in high school named Mrs Zavastitsa who once explained to the class her theory of knowledge as a circle. You can represent everything you know as a circle, she explained. Every time you learn something new, the circle gets bigger. But even as the circle grows, its size is always eclipsed by what is outside the circle. More importantly, as the area of the circle grows — so does its circumference. Her message was simple — the more you learn, the more you realize what you don’t know.

I’ve always found the mental model of knowledge helpful. Sometimes it feels like the more I learn, the less I know. Nowhere has that been more true that working at a startup. Each day is an exercise in learning about something new, and each thing you dig into that seems simple, grows more complicated the more you understand it.

The necessary corollary to that, is that if you don’t find yourself regularly bumping into the limits of your knowledge — you’re not learning anything new. So embrace the feeling of not knowing. It’s not a signal that you haven’t learned enough, but that you’re continuing to expand your horizons.