- Understand that there is no speed limit. You can be as fast or as slow as you should be.
- Mimic. Connections and insights are rarely magical. Usually the person has been trained by themselves/others or have come up with mental "hacks" to promote these kind of eureka type thoughts.
Decades ago, my best friend was much better about making connections, insights, etc. I was constantly wowed. Instead of fixed mindset like "I'll never be as good/clever as they are" I simply asked: "How did you come up with that?" or "How did you figure it out?". Sometimes he would point me to how he read documentation and interpreted that into code. Once I got the cryptic answer "Think like an electron." (His point was that similar to how you can predict how water will flow down a mountain, valley, gather against dams, you can kind of predict how electrons move through capacitors, inductors, diodes, etc.)
The point is that I was less interested the outcomes and more interested in how they were achieved.
You'll find that there is a snowball effect. The more connections and insights you make, the easier it is to add to them.
Lastly, the core principles of no zero days might help out. Here's a link to the seminal reddit comment:
https://www.reddit.com/r/getdisciplined/comments/1q96b5/i_ju...
There's a plethora of material available about how to overcome this voice (mindfulness, meditation, self-help etc.). It's a long process, but it is possible to liberate yourself from it.
Personally, what helped me was to keep a journal. And take regular breaks to reflect on what I have written. Over time (talking years), I realised in a kind of "insight" the ever repeating thought patterns I keep writing down. Am I now free of them? No, and sometimes they still frighten me (rightly so, the feeling of not being good enough has a positive, encouraging side) but more often than not I see them as this old grumpy neighbour that you meet every morning who keeps to bore you with the always same complaints. You greet him, listen for a few minutes and then continue with your day.
I find that doing things like that reinforce my confidence and give me the drive to go learn new things and build my knowledge. Also try to surround yourself with good people, that's easier said than done, but even following colleagues on social media that you find to be good role models is helpful. It's reassuring to me when someone I really look up to also experiences these same feelings. It's just comforting to know you're not alone sometimes in that regard.
But as far as shaking off the "nagging feeling" goes, I'd start with reinforcing what you do know to help build confidence, and see if that helps.
Talk about this more here: https://codewithoutrules.com/2017/03/05/failing-at-your-new-...
The other option as others said is impostor syndrome. https://adainitiative.org/continue-our-work/impostor-syndrom... has some techniques to help you get more realistic understanding of where you are.
Stop comparing your self to other individuals, you are not them, you don't have their strengths or weaknesses. You are trying to compare apples and oranges.
Stop judging yourself over such a broad spectrum, you just can't be good at everything you don't have the time to learn it all. You have weaknesses sure but you also have strengths, deal with it, give your self a bit of credit where credit is due.
Stop comparing your self to external forces that are beyond your control or ability to understand. Stop setting your self up for failure.
Start comparing yourself today to yourself yesterday. "I always feel I'll be lagging" you can't lag behind yourself. "cannot make the same connections", "cannot have the same insight" you make your own insights and connects not others, this is your strength and their weakness, give your self some credit where credit is due.
"I avoid trying to learn and develop" Don't try to match or improve on others, improve on yourself, start small. Learn one new thing a day, it doesn't have to be a big new complicated thing. Through out your day you will at some point have a question or a curiosity. Keep an eye out for it and encourage it, answer your question or do a bit of research, then make a note of it, job done, you are now objectively better than your competition(you yesterday) and have the note to prove it. Well done! Give yourself a reward like a coffee or a cookie :)
You need middle confidence
I think finding out what your niche is in the first place can be much harder than actually getting good. Best of luck ;)
"Know Thyself"
What did I do well today? Did I learn something? What did I accomplish? Did I improve myself compared to yesterday?
I also have a reminder in my phone morning and night that tells me “I am good enough.”.
The other important thing to learn is that you can become an expert at something. Once you have one skill under your belt you realize that it's possible to climb the ladder of expertise on almost any topic if you're able to stick with it.
I guess you have made something? Many others would not be able to make what you have made, well done.
I also also guess there are those smarter than you. They will also make things.
One day you will look back and find that you made something which others more clever than you never got around to. Enjoy what you make and don't worry too much about what those more clever do or don't make.
There's the common quote that I hear people say "If you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room." If you always follow that, you'll always feel like you're the dumbest, and no one will ever learn anything that you know. There's some other problems with that quote such as if everyone followed that, we'd all be chasing each other from room to room and the smartest person on the planet would have some issues, but alas, that's not relevant.
Going and mentoring people, or finding a company where you didn't start in as the lowest rung, will help you a lot. When you stay in the company you started in, as long as you're there you will wonder if you are skilled, or if you just have domain knowledge that makes you look more skilled than someone who just joined. Mentoring and teaching will help you realize just how far you've come, and the people who you teach will look to you like you look to those people who make you feel dumb and not good enough. I don't mean that in a negative way, they will respect your skills and look to you for advice, just like the people you look to now.
As for having trouble making the same insights and connections, that's just per the territory. Perhaps you're a developer who is self taught, or went through a boot camp, and working in a place that gets pretty computer science level (ML, fancy math and algorithms, NLP, ect). These people have lots of experience in these things that you don't, and so they make the connections, and you can learn to get there but it will take a long time. It's useful stuff, but maybe switching to a less intense job for a bit will help on that. Or maybe they know more about the current industry you're in, someone making medical study tracking software will do better if they have conducted a study before for example.
Lastly just straight up be honest and maybe ask them how they made that insight. Tell them that you don't understand how they got from point A to point D, and you can see if there's some thought process you can learn from them, or if the difference is just a large amount of background knowledge.
Truly lastly though, I will also say that consuming alcohol often can really slow your brain down, and just in case this is relevant, consider looking into cutting back safely with your doctor's advice. My mind has doubled in sharpness and speed of making those kind of connections since I got sober almost 2 years ago and also gave up smoking. So also talk to your doctor and be sure there's nothing physical that is actually causing your mental thought processes to falter and sabotage your confidence.
* Do less stuff that does not matter. If it does not matter but needs to be done, try to delegate or automate it.
* Don't devote attention to stuff that does not matter. (Eg. the tech news firehose or the latest Trump tweet)
* Exercise regularly.
* Eat right.
* Sleep well.
Maybe you are comparing yourself to those with higher IQ.
Training and education doesn't seem to help IQ that much.