I’ve often found myself on a journey of being presented with a project or problem and feeling like, “wow, I have so much to learn,” to then solving the problem and thinking, “I feel comfortable now and I know everything I need to,” only to go back to the original feeling immediately upon starting my next project.
Frank Besch introduced me to the concept of the Trough of Disillusionment, and although it’s about new technologies:
I often compare it internally to how I feel about learning. Rather, it’s felt more like this:
I seem to only get the high of the journey for a handful of days before I’m challenged with a new project and realize how little I actually know. It’s the ol' Dunning–Kruger effect: "You don’t know what you don’t know till you know.”
When I first joined the product management team at Oracle, I looked forward to the day that the “I know everything” feeling would be permanent.
But that's not the point.
The point isn't to achieve a feeling of mastery and stop. It's about the number of times you can get the feeling, only to force yourself to get back down to do it over again.
There's always something new to learn.
Alright, I'm done.
Cheers and happy Friday,
Killian
p.s. Thanks Dom for giving me the room to learn, and more importantly fail. It’s been invaluable thus far in my career.
p.s.s. If you read that whole thing, I owe you a beer.
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