This post was originally published on this site.
It can suck to be a beginner at just about anything. It’s not just that you are not yet good at this thing as you’d like to be. There is also a clear gap — the presence of mind to know what is good — and you are not there. This of course, can force an entire “judgment cascade” concerning not only your current abilities, but the expectation of how quickly you should improve.
Most of us are not great at being beginners. Yet, we seem to lose that gift over time. When we attend college, none of us holds the expectation that after our first semester as a freshman, we will be ready to fully function in our field of choice (if we’ve managed to identify that field). We are patient in that sense, and willing to put in the endless hours of sitting in class, reading textbooks and listening to professors share their expertise.
Moreover, we are not unhappy about making that investment. Because we patently accept that all of this takes time. Our goals are aligned with the process.
But we lose this patience as time goes on. We barely tolerate the time it takes to become better at something we value. This, in part, could be explained by the situations we are in at work; where a deadline might be pressing against the time it’s taking for us to master something. Yet, the problem can still lie with our own expectations. And, yes we might be expecting too much, and too soon. There are risks if we don’t come to terms with all of this — we could face burnout or even, sadness.
My dilemma, while writing this, is not only that we need to offer room for our skill sets to flourish — yet we must also manage when we bring them to the table. If we declare ourselves as competent too soon, we risk outcomes that could have been avoided if we had just given things more time. If we had just lowered our expectations about progress just a bit — if we chose our goals more prudently — maybe learning something can seem more natural once again.
Just my thoughts on the topic.
Share your experiences.
Dr. Marla Gottschalk is an Industrial/Organizational Psychology Practitioner who focuses on bringing core stability to our work lives. She is a charter member of the LinkedIn Top Voice Program. Her thoughts on work & life have appeared in various outlets including the Harvard Business Review, The World Economic Forum & the BBC.