The mechanic, the lunch lady, the bus driver: experts in things you’d be lost doing. Respect the knowledge.

Expertise gets recognized easily when it comes with a title and missed completely when it does not. Feeding four hundred people on schedule, threading a bus through traffic without spilling a coffee, diagnosing a noise by ear: these are difficult, learned skills that you would perform badly on day one. The reason they look simple is that someone competent is doing them in front of you.

Ask one person this week how they got good at the thing they do all day. Listen to the answer rather than filling the silence. You will learn something, and they will notice that you saw them.