🤔 'We always start out horrible'

Applying my grandma's advice to career moves

You wouldn’t think being told you will be horrible at something would feel comforting. But somehow when my grandma said it, it was.

I’ll let my mom explain:

What stands out to me about how my grandmother approached being the worst student at shorthand college is not that she ended up on top, but that she approached the problem as a process. If you keep working at it, you’ll improve and can become the best that you can be.

Which makes me wonder — when it comes to our careers, why do we lose our beginner’s mindset?

Last week I was at a workshop that cited a 1960s NASA study on creativity. The research found that 98% of four- and five-year-olds scored as “creative geniuses,” and then the percentage steadily declined until, by adulthood, only two percent reached the genius level.

We’re encouraged to dream big and use our imaginations — until we aren’t, and suddenly getting good grades and SAT scores, getting into good colleges and scoring good job offers becomes more important. No wonder our creativity declines. We’re trained to succeed in the system by following the path laid out for us.

I also blame the career ladder for creating unrealistic expectations about how long it takes to become comfortable in a new role. Climb a rung and boom, there you are. But in reality, it takes time to understand how you can best contribute in a new job. I asked Neil Golden, the former Chief Marketing Officer of McDonald’s USA, how long it took him to get used to being the CMO in our Q&A. Even in a company where he had worked for 18 years, where he knew people and had their trust, he said “there was an awful lot of growing into the role.” Starting a new career chapter is more like following the curve of the river bend — it opens up over time.

There was a poster my wife had for years in her kindergarten classroom saying, “The expert in anything was once a beginner.” I always appreciated the reminder that no matter how horrible I might be at something when I start, it’s just the start.

Though we’re long past kindergarten, there’s still a way to recapture the creativity we used to effortlessly enjoy and apply it to our careers.