BEING A NOVICE: A practical guide to make up for your lack of experience.
True masters have accumulated an unfathomable number of hours perfecting their craft. And with experience comes a sense of ease. Effortlessness. The years spent in pursuit of mastery give the experts the advantage of pattern recognition. A sort of intuitive knowledge. In many cases, the pattern recognition is so fast that it feels supernatural. A sixth sense. And with this superpower comes confidence.
Novices on the other hand, have no experience to fall back on. Instead, their performance is often hindered by the lack of certainty about their talent and ability to deliver results — consistently. So they’re consumed with doubt and a crippling sense of inadequacy.
To make up for your lack of experience, you should redirect your attention to the things working in your favor, and most importantly, to things within your control.
First, recognize that to be green in any field offers tremendous opportunity for unconventional thinking because you are not yet beholden to the norms of your field or industry. You come at problems with fresh eyes. With a sense of enthusiasm and hopeful naivety that often yields new, unexpected solutions.
Second, realize that, in some ways, experts envy you. The masters remember, jealously, the excitement and electricity of the early days. Though it might be difficult for you to appreciate, you will never live days quite like these again. In fact, you might even find yourself chasing after this feeling for the rest of your life. You will come to realize, as every master eventually does but often too late, that there’s no victory, no outcome, no success that could compare to the fragrance of life in these early years.
Next, armed with your passion, enthusiasm and youthful exuberance, you must recognize that the only way to make up for your lack of experience is through effort. And so you must practice. Incessantly. You must put in the work required to make up for your inability to recognize patterns. Invest time and effort to make up for your undeveloped sixth sense. You must acquire the emotional stamina that great work demands. The generosity to try again, and again, until you are satisfied with the work. But in this quest for mastery, recognize that perfection isn’t elusive because it is difficult to achieve, but because it doesn’t exist. And so the only thing that matters is to give your best — every time — without ever cutting corners or taking the easy way out. In doing so, you will learn that true satisfaction doesn’t come from the outcome of your work, but from the effort you put forth.
Then, learn to focus on the work itself. Anything that takes you away from today’s work must be put into proper perspective. And when you find your fears and insecurities drifting you away, redirect that energy to the things that will advance today’s work. When you feel the internal resistance threatening to steal valuable hours of practice, remind yourself that the real difference between the novice and the expert, beyond what’s apparent, is the ability to override that resistance and show up. No matter what.
Finally, do not wrap your identity with your work. Never hang your worth on success and failure. Instead, treat them as feedback. Learn, before too late, that the reward is in fact the journey. And as rewards come, there won’t be sweeter ones than the passion, excitement and enthusiasm of these early years.
