Early into a specific field we feel we are doing innovative things that are not novel or new. As we spend more time with a field we feel like we are being less innovative, but are actually being more innovative. We are poor judges of how innovative our ideas are. This is another form of the Curse of Knowledge.
References
Being intimately familiar with something enables us to be playful with it, to modify it, to spot new and different ideas without running the risk of merely repeating old ideas believing they are new. — How to Take Smart Notes