We have teams for a reason. Communities for a reason. We learn from each other. We learn from our experiences. We learn from other's experiences. I've heard a lot of the stuff I am writing here today, but it makes so much more sense right now.
I feel like I couldn't get things right at work consistently lately. But these things I didn't get right today - I will be able to do them better the next time. I felt like I should have been able to figure some things out, things that someone else with more experience managed to figure out after me. Instead of feeling like crap, my friend reminded me that I'm a part of a team, I need to give experience the respect it deserves, sit with the person and understand what I missed, and shift my thinking from self pity to celebrating a win for the team and continuous learning.
I was feeling really upset with myself for having to iterate so many times on some of my work. But I spoke to someone I look up to today, and was reminded how ideally, when you mess things up, a mentor's role is to help you learn, and keep giving you opportunities to apply those learnings. And that really has happened to me all my life. I have messed up. But I have not stopped getting opportunities to be better. So I am grateful for that.
It's funny though. When I was getting things right at work, it had kind of felt like I had stopped learning a lot. The learning curve has suddenly increased again lately, which is really exciting... and I can't wait to conquer this mountain (which is also only preparing me to summit another one after) 😊
Thank you to everyone who gave me perspective. It was much needed, and it is much appreciated!!
Love,
Kanksha
1. A team is, in some way, is a collective identity. Working in a team towards a set of shared goals is a wonderful opportunity to learn how to dynamically expand or contract the sense of self as per the unique needs of the situation (for now, think of self and identity as the same thing). Many ways to do this, from practical to other-worldly, but language modifications and a change in behavioural frame is the quickest way to tap into the expansive state. Use "we" vs "I" , build concensus instead of conflict, look for commonalities that reinforce the bigger picture, ask questions, whiteboard together, so on and so forth. The expansive state is like accessing a larger, more collective mind (not brain). The contractive state is useful for harnessing and emphasizing what you uniquely bring to the table that others don't. It might take a while to figure this out, and it may not even be core technical skills. The following is just an example -> it could just be the ability to hammer at a problem for hours and gather enough data (and context) so that the expansive state can take over and solve the problem to fruition - which means someone else (or expansive you) solves the problem after your individual (contractive) effort set the foundations. Now, because you're momentarily in the expansive / collective identity, who solved it doesn't matter, it's a state of happiness because you and the other person who solved it are the same (although physically seperate) in that larger bounded sense of self. Now in this situation, if the self is contracted, feelings of jealousy, pride, anger and frustration might take precedence because of thoughts like "I didn't solve it, he did, I am doomed.". When you can expand and loosen the boundaries of what is "you" (physical boundaries continue to exist), happiness (and even competence) is easily accessible - the perceived seperation (me vs them) and "thingness" of self is the root cause of all unhappiness. Whether you solve the problem or not, the collective happiness of the team becomes yours to own and cherish.
ReplyDelete2. Experience is a function of many parameters. Most people consider only "time", but that's a skewed view. Sometimes it's a function of broader context, more interactions, life events, well developed frameworks or other parameters where time is not the major contributer. If you want to "learn" or "clone" experience, the fastest way is to break down the core skill set the experienced person has. Use first principles and a classic divide & conquer strategy. Eg. A girl who writes 2x the content of her peers in a week and is writing since she was a kid (decade of experience) has well developed intuition that automatically handles vocabulary, writing structures, logical flow, plot transitions, etc in the writing process itself - she doesn't have to think about it while writing. If another girl without the necessary volume of work (say she just wrote a select few good pieces in her younger days), and not as much time experience has to learn, then it needs deliberate practise of the specific skills that were under the umbrella of experience. With systematic practice (means she acts out each skill while writing), it might not take her a decade to build the core skills...if all of a sudden, she churns out a new book every month, the argument of experience (as a function of time) gets tossed away. The key is to divide the experience into core skills and then conquer each skill. This is the logical and safe way to do it. The other way, which I don't recommended, is to download the experience from consciousness in the blink of an eye (or shell script). ;) (without damaging that person ofc)
(sorry, the reply was too long, had break it into 2 comments cause character limit)
Delete3. Learning curves are lame, they are entirely in your control in most cases. You can make something as mundane as a web crawler that checks a blog for new posts daily into an engineering specimen that's used in the core infra of BigSearchEngineCompany. Apply philosophical treatment or rigorous scientific process to anything, irrespective of time or difficulty or nature, and it's learning curve will get steeper.