#45: The Willingness to Suck
And being in the unknown
To learn at a rapid pace, you have to be willing to suck at a lot of things. And the more you suck at something, the more opportunity you have to learn. I've got a decent history of sucking at things:
When I was 23, I ditched my entire undergraduate studies to pursue a career in sales, which I had never done before or studied.
When I started learning to code when I was 26, I had never coded before, and boy, was I bad. It took me years before I felt any degree of competence.
When I started designing user interfaces and user experiences, I hadn't done anything artistic since probably elementary school. My designs were terrible.
When I started Jiu Jitsu at the age of 27, I was terrible. I was a 215-pound guy getting tapped out by 150-pound guys. Talk about embarrassing. This still happens over 3 years later.
When I started writing last year at the age of 30, I sucked.
And now, as I'm starting to learn to make videos right now at the age of 31, guess what? I'm going to suck.
When I was younger, I thought excelling in your career meant becoming such an expert that you become the pinnacle of knowledge in a particular domain within your organization. Maybe this is a byproduct of being educated through engineering schools, where technical aptitude is held in such high regard.
However, my experience has shown me the opposite to be true. The most important skill to develop is the ability to develop new skills and learn new things extremely quickly. It isn't to know the answer; it's to know how to navigate without a map and figure out the terrain and where you should go rapidly. You develop this skill by repeatedly throwing yourself into the unknown, being willing to suck, and having the fortitude and perseverance to be in that place for an extended period of time.
Through many repetitions, you become comfortable being in that place of the unknown. You become comfortable being dropped in a terrain without a map. Over time, people will recognize your comfort in that space and start throwing you those problems that are the deepest into the territory of the unknown. Those are the problems that, when solved, have the opportunity to truly make a difference.
So, be willing to suck. Get comfortable in unfamiliar terrain, and enjoy the process of continually trying to find your way.
