“Courage is not having the strength to go on; it is going on when you don't have the strength.”

- Theodore Roosevelt

In our one-on-ones (things that I am generally bad at turning into "here is my status" meetings), Luke started asking weird questions that confused me, mostly in the sense they seemed to come out of the far left field (for the record, I'm still unsure which side is the left field, though I'm fairly certain it's the third base line).

When I asked something to the effect of "WTF?" he explained they were from the Better 1:1 program series. It's a group of emails sent to a lead and to a team (sometimes slightly different formats), designed to give the entire group insight into team dynamics, items to talk about in the one-on-ones, and ways to gain insights into areas employees may not be able to talk about directly.

Cool. I love this idea. I signed up for myself and myself-as-a-team.

The question that triggered this for me, my total "WTF?" moment, was, "What are your three superpowers at work?"

What?

My response went something like...

"..."

"..."

"..."

Though it might have been something more like...

*blink*

*blink blink*

*blink*

Luke was able to give me his superpowers quickly. He had been thinking about his:

1. Fast
2. Follow up relentlessly
3. I forget.

That last one is a direct quote. He couldn't remember his last one.

So, I thought about this for a bit, now that I understood the parameters. The first one was easy:

I can explain something until you understand.

If I have to explain something 17 times and give background going back to the fundamentals, I will do that in order to help you (for any definition of "you" as my coworker) understand. Sometimes that process is straightforward, and sometimes it is not. You will, however, understand what I'm explaining, when we're done.

I can present to a crowd

If you tell me what you need to say, and I don't have to wing it, I can present to a crowd. Meaning, I can't stand up in front of a crowd if I don't have anything to say. I can stand up in front of a crowd and talk to them, explain 17 different ways if I need to explain something 17 different ways, and not be wetting my pants. I do tend to speak quickly, not because I'm nervous, but rather because I usually have a lot to say because I want the people I'm speaking to walk away with a way for them to be awesome. In those cases, it's not about me, it's about them. But, yeah, I can stand up in front of a crowd and present.

I can organize thoughts well, creating a coherent presentation

This superpower took a while to develop. It's easy to throw a bunch of numbers and charts and sentences on a slide and call your deck done. It's harder to create a coherent thread and possibly a story with a deck. What you've seen are likely my public speaking decks, and not always my internal presentation decks. There's something for being able to design a deck that is useful outside of the talk itself.

This one related back to the first one, in being able to explain something you can understand.

So, those are my three superpowers at work that I listed. I rather left off the "you can give me any bug and I will track it down," mostly because that's a learned skill, not really a superpower. I'm a dog on a bone if you give me license to stick with it. There are practical concerns that make that not necessary, but I do possess that skill.

And I also care a great deal about automating development processes. That is important to me, but skill that is often left to the dev-ops people for infrastructure. For development processes, though, yep, a budding superpower.

In our one-on-one, I did present the reverse of my superpowers. I was able to quickly present my three areas of kryptonite.

While I could argue being able to point your what's wrong with you faster than you can point out what is right with you is rather a thing that is wrong with you, I am glad I listed them to Luke. Because I had, I am aware of them, and am now fighting tooth and nail to change them from weaknesses into strengths.

Maybe, someday, I will be able to list them as additional superpowers.

What a sad, sad state of the world that men are not allowed to cry, that men have to reject crying episodes by attacking anyone who asks about them, that crying is considered weak instead of an expression of deep, deep pain.

What a sad state of self that crying is considered shameful, that the healthy release of frustration and sorrow and pain should be hidden, that a natural response to grief should be suppressed in this culture.

THIS.

http://everythingsstupid.net/?webcomic1=the-eternal-beatdown

There is something comforting about being an expert on a topic (as long as said topic is not yourself, and even then I would suggest very few of us are actually experts on ourselves).

You have put in all of this time and effort and you know things. You don't have to look up information. You don't have to figure out how to do something. You don't struggle with the example you're looking at, pulling out your hair, only to discover four hours later that the example for the software library you're using was written for two versions back and won't work for the versions you're using now. You don't have to ask for help, because you are the one who is offering the help. You can answer questions. You are the one who creates the examples, tutorials, best practices.

That is a good feeling, being an expert.

And it is such a crock of shit. It is stunningly deceptive.

You let your guard down. You relax. You stop doing research on the subject. Why should you? You know everything. Or, at least enough to be paid very, very well.

The worst part of being an expert, if you aren't a diligent expert?

You stop learning.

You're so busy using the knowledge you have, that you stop learning the new things happening.

Consider the elder doctor. Her way of thinking is what she learned 40 years ago. She might go (likely has to go) to seminars and conferences and updated-techniques education, but the baseline was established 40 years ago when she was younger, in school, and CRAMMING all that knowledge into her head, developing all of her skills. That baseline doesn't include the advances of the last few decades by default.

Do you want someone thinking a lobotomy is the right way to "cure" depression?

You do not.

And, of course, that's an exaggeration, but the concept of a set point, of that moment where learning begins, is not. What you learn first is the hardest part to unlearn. Everything is a change from that moment, not a new concept.

Being an expert is "something fixes your brain in that state," making learning new things more difficult.

Being a non-expert in something is being in this state of discomfort all the time. You don't know how to do the simplest things. You try and you crash, and crash, and crash, and crash. And every time you try, before you crash again, you're a little closer to where you want to be.

The best learning that can be done is to learn how to learn. Understanding what process works for you requires experimentation. Some people learn best sitting in a classroom, having someone else explain concepts to them. Others learn by reading about them. Everyone learns by actually doing what needs to be learned, but even that has nuances. Do you learn by going through a finished example, top to bottom? Or maybe going through a tutorial step by step, learning new things by layering them on the old. Do you try new things? "What happens if I do this?" "No idea, try it." Can you think outside the confines of the lesson to the concept actually being conveyed. Do you play with it, mold it, stretch it, squish it, flatten and ball it up until you understand all the nuances of the idea?

Having been an expert in Drupal for so long, I had forgotten how I learn a new technology. I had forgotten all the techniques that work for me. I sat back on my hard-won knowledge, even as I struggled with the abstraction of an abstraction of an abstraction path Drupal was taking.

And then I went to Shopify. They had faith. They had a way of doing things. I was going to learn.

And I did.

And have been in that perpetual state of learning for the last 14 months, that mental struggle to understand the why along with the how. It was seriously rough going in the beginning. I had forgotten how I learn, how to say "I don't know," and how to say, "I need help." I had forgotten to say, "no," and I had forgotten how to be gentle with myself. I expected to hit the ground running with the speed of a decade of knowledge, and that expectation was terribly incorrect.

A lesson I learned, though, have RElearned, is how to learn. What works for me.

In the last month, I've picked up a number of more frameworks and languages and processes and techniques, and my brain is stuffed and still expanding. I've experimented with technologies I was unsure would fit my needs: some of those experiments failed, some succeeded wildly. All of them were learning experiences. I know 10000 ways not to make a lightbulb now.

I'm sad to say that in the process of being an expert, I had forgotten to be a beginner.

I'm happy to say, I've remembered.