Breaking out of perfect
Attending an
interview that became the impetus for an almost 13-year sojourn in The
Netherlands, I was asked a question about a scenario I had never encountered in all the environments I had ever worked in before. I had no answer to what the
interviewer must have thought would be the dealbreaker of suitability to fill
in the role.
Having answered all
other questions, I was asked if I had any comments, and I took the opportunity
to seek an answer to the question that stomped me before returning home to
research what it was all about. I concluded to myself that the reason I had
never encountered that issue was that the environments in which I had worked
were almost too perfect and where no problems arose, there was no challenge to
normalcy or quest for any resolution.
Problems and practice
are necessary
In my professional
life, there is a lot of documentation about how to design, setup, and implement
features and products, but what do you do when things do not work as required
or expected? That is where knowledge and experience are created, the art of
troubleshooting is honed in the hard craft of practice and research, seeking
out where things might have deviated from the norm and reviewing experiences of
others in the field to augment, enhance, and improve your knowledge and expertise
towards becoming a subject matter expert.
That aspect of
practice and discovery is all too necessary along with the inevitable mistakes
that dot a life of determination, adventure, application, daring, and accomplishment.
We all know we are not perfect, but we are always getting better, the more time
and effort we put into understanding how things work and consequently why they
fail to work as intended.
Face the fear of
failure
Yet, this does not
just apply to the narrow area of the use of technology but any useful
endeavour. As a conversation with Brian, the other way gave birth to some
conceptual thinking about the fear of making mistakes. The strains of what I
said turned into what might be a saying, a note to myself and to anyone else
with whom it might resonate.
“If you don't make
mistakes, you can't correct them, you don't learn from them and you have no
practice necessary to perfect your craft. The fear of making mistakes
ultimately robs you however close or remote, of the possibility of genius.
Mistakes help you become the best.” Now, go and do that thing you were
afraid to do because of your fear of failure or embarrassment.
