14h ago

You got this

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I'd argue that a great many people know what they're doing but a fuck-tonne of them don't know how to give themselves the credit they deserve.
It's like they're waiting for some mystical uber adult to give them a certificate saying they're competent enough to trust their own judgement.
What is it people think "knowing what you're doing" entails?
Most of what we do day to day is not new in terms of the human experience. We eat, sleep, work, socialise, raise our children, etc.. Most people manage this, usually through a combination of learning from others and their own mistakes. Are a lot of people just not able to acknowledge their own competence at these things?
- What is it people think "knowing what you're doing" entails?
  Recognition.
- Yeah, I think so much of this comes from tests and grades in school. You go through the most formative years of your life taking tests, getting grades, moving onto the next year in school, and getting certificates and degrees.
  Then eventually, that part of your life is over and you're just on your own. I remember when my wife and I first took our son home from the hospital. We kept expecting some authority to come around and deem us worthy of parenting or something. It just felt weird to be like "here's a baby, good luck!"
  So much of life is like that, which leads to a lot of people experiencing imposter syndrome. I've personally been working professionally for 20+ years and sometimes think "ah man, today's the day I'm gonna have a surprise test and everyone's going to know I don't know what the hell I'm doing."
- Perhaps the paradox is that if you find someone who actually knows what they're doing, then who of all the people who don't know what they're doing will even know that the first person knows?
  People will tell you that you're right or wrong based on their own experience which is likely to be even more wrong than someone who is actually right.
  
  I mostly find the framing tiresome. It's a sort of learned helplessness.
  It's trying to frame life as something one is only "correctly" handling if everything is planned out in the tiniest detail. Anyone trying to do anything of the slightest complexity knows that's not a good way to manage tasks.
  Of course, if one goes through life imagining that what one should be doing is being an adult with a plan of infinite complexity and anything less is "pretending" (or "winging it", or whatever) then it's easy to keep the infantilising personal narrative going. "I'm not a real grown-up" and shit like that.
  Defining a "real grown up" as a hyper-competent person found only in fiction or through the eyes of a young child then yeah, we're all making it up as we go. But given that's a bloody stupid standard, I think we can all be a little nicer to ourselves.
  
  I think of it more like the classic half full or half empty glass, but with a little extra twist.
  I can't do anything right and that's okay because no one can.
  I can do things just as good as everyone else.
  The first is funny, but it's a poor excuse to avoid responsibility and accepting that nothing gets done. The second is better, but it can dangerous if it over promotes self confidence.
  It's a saying that pops into my head whenever I have the option to take responsibility for something. It's okay to "fake it till you make" if the alternative is worse .
  More often than not, taking responsibility for stuff I only barely know about has given me a much better understanding about it than just sitting back and letting some other person half-ass it. It's very rare that anyone knows everything in advance, and I'd be very cautious when someone claims that they do.
  Anyway, this joke has sometimes helped me in those leap of faith situations and it has lead to a positive experience everytime.

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