I mean honestly half-assing it sometimes truly is your best. You should live your life in such a way that putting in 20% of your best effort satisfies the necessary conditions for your continued existence with an 80% or greater success ratio.
Your actual best should be reserved for times of crisis and necessity, and should only be pulled out a few times a week at most.
If you have to put your best in every single second of every single day, you’re going to break down, you’re going to have multiple instances of failure due to the sheer psychological and physiological limitations of existence.
If you’re going to be putting in your best every single second of every single day for a set time, it has to be for accomplishing a specific goal with a specific end date in mind after which you can return to living at 20%.
If that isn’t working for you right now, you need to adjust your circumstances so that you can return to 20%.
I wish someone taught me this before severe burnout.
I wish I had a regulating valve for effort output. It’s a bit better with my ADHD meds, but not by much. Burnout cycles for me.
“Youre doing the best you can in your circumstances” can fix that.
Very few people know what they’re doing.
Egotistical people almost entirely just believe they do.
The few people who do know what they’re doing almost always do so because they love it, not because it’s their job. Expertise requires genuine interest, otherwise you’ll just memorize the motions without really knowing what you’re doing.
A good, experienced carpenter knows how to make a shelf, they know it inside and out, to the point only another experienced carpenter would be able to perceive the imperfections the creator does. They would continue to craft regardless of employment. That is knowing what you’re doing.
I feel a great swell of pity for the rare wage slaves that take the same degree of ownership about their workplace workflows. They’re walking corpses, their spark is extinguished.
I hate the fact that I must agree with you, as I see the same things. I have however, been working on my feelings towards the “rare wage slaves”.
It ceased to be pity sometime along the way, and instead became angry indignation.
That could have been you or I, but for a few quirks of genetics and having had access to enough resources such as nutrition or quality education.
Equally rare is the person who is innately that way, I feel. They are molded into that, deliberately.
Still trying to work out meaningful ways to help besides talking to them at the workplaces and pivoting careers towards social work.
But it’s so little against so much.
Worst part is when you feel you could do better but you can’t/don’t
Am I really the only person who feels confident in their work?? I do good work. So does my team, some of them do better than me.
I’m not like a prodigy or anything, but I am quite competent.
If I don’t instantly figure out how to be an expert in it after 5 minutes of hands on experience, I feel like a total failure.
Oh man it took me like 3 years to git gud
Not at all. I think it’s great you have that.
For me its never a constant. Some days I feel like a rock star and other days I’m questioning my competence to so much as use a screwdriver.
But I remind myself thats okay. If I’m unsure it means there’s a new challenge, it means I’m learning and I trust myself to figure it out someday.
I think people just like to share when they’re feeling down, so we see more posts like that. It makes for better engagement and entertainment. Besides no one likes a braggart and it’s hard not to come off as one when talking about achievements.
Good point, I never bring it up except as a response to posts like this.
Zoomed in, my competence is a bunch of sharp spikes in both directions. Zoomed out, I’m rather competent overall. I find most people to be more consistent day to day. My confidence fluctuates with the spikes.
I don’t know how to zoom out, but I’m trying to at least detach my self-esteem from my performance.
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I know exactly how that feels.
The difference between an amateur and an expert is just time. You can only put in more time, not retroactively allocate the past.
such a life phenomenon
