How to Keep Going When You Feel Like Your Work SucksCreating -- building something from nothing and sharing it with the world -- requires a lot of bravery. In the end, it can feel a bit like breaking yourself free.
This story originally appeared onBuffer
Einstein was right about a lot of things, but in my mind this sentiment is one of his finest discoveries (OK, the general theory of relativity is pretty good, too).
Creating--building something from nothing and sharing it with the world--requires a lot of bravery. In the end, it can feel a bit like breaking yourself free.
I've chronicled bothmy own idea prisonand some ofmy attempts to free myselfon the blog before.
But lately I've noticed the "prison of your own ideas" sneaking up on me in a new way: It can stop us from learning the kind of new skills that can challenge us and help us grow as people.
Do you know that learning-something-new feeling when you look at what you've created and think your work totally sucks? Or when you feel so overwhelmed by a new concept that it seems easier to just give up altogether?
I wanted to find some help breaking out ofthatparticular prison. Maybe you do, too.
As it turns out,getting comfortablewith the concept of productive failure--aka giving yourself "permission to be terrible"--isn't just healthy; it can help you learn, too!
Why we always think our work sucks at first
To me,This American LifehostIra Glasshas the definitive quote about that inferior, I'm-never-going-to-get-this-right feeling that often accompanies trying something new:
The short version: There's a very good (and hopeful) answer to why this feeling hurts so much--we have great taste!
The downside is that our newly-forming abilities haven't had time to catch up with our superior taste.
So we're deeply, painfully aware of how bad we are.
Give yourself permission to be terrible
How do you combat this? You could stick to just the things that come easy.
You'll be good at them, for sure, but you'll miss the thrill of overcoming giant obstacles and improving yourself so much that you barely recognize the point where you started.
一个更好的方法,我已经给自己烫ission to be terrible at new things, with the knowledge that this is the necessary first step tostopbeing terrible.
Apost I really love on this topiclists a few reasons why this approach is preferable:
- Doing things you suck at can still be enjoyable.
- Doing things you enjoy, can often lead to not sucking at them.
- Life is long, sucking is temporary.
And even though the terribleness could last quite a while, keep going andpractice truly does makes perfect. (Or at least less sucky, after a while.)
A great visual exploration ofthis blog postdraws out that well-known aphorism in such a tactical way:
Bonus: Productive failure leads to faster learning
The really good news about feeling totally in over your head when it comes to learning something new is that it could be surprisingly good for you--and even help you learn faster!
Manu Kapur, Professor of Psychological Studies at the Hong Kong Institute of Education, has pioneered the cool and counterintuitive idea ofproductive failure.
To learn this way, students are presented with unfamiliar concepts and asked to work through them right away, without being taught the method or solution.
Research has shown that this method leads students to significantly outperform those who learn through traditional instruction and problem-solving.
Kapur's theory is that leading students to dig deep and discover:
- what they know
- the limits of what they know
- what they don't know
actuallyactivates parts of the brain that trigger deeper learning.
So while this feeling isn't veryfun(Kapur notes that most of the students felt low confidence after the exercise), it can be super productive.
Developing a growth mindset
To get scientific, what we're really talking about here is agrowth mindset.
Carol Dweck, a researcher at Stanford University and author ofMindset: The New Psychology of Success, explains the difference between the two mindsets using students as an example:
"In a fixed mindset, students believe their basic abilities, their intelligence, their talents, are just fixed traits. They have a certain amount and that's that, and then their goal becomes to look smart all the time and never look dumb.
In a growth mindset, students understand that their talents and abilities can be developed through effort, good teaching and persistence. They don't necessarily think everyone's the same or anyone can be Einstein, but they believe everyone can get smarter if they work at it."
Because of Dweck's studies, we know thatmuch of your success hinges on whether you believe that your abilities can be developedversus believing that they're fixed.
Those with a growth mindset can handle sucking for a while. Because they focus on their ability to change and grow--as opposed to those with a fixed mindset--they can see the light at the end of the tunnel and think on a time when they will see improvement.
