You look at where you’re going and where you are and it never makes sense, but then you look back at where you’ve been and a pattern seems to emerge. And if you project forward from that pattern, then sometimes you can come up with something.
You are beginning to realize how little you know, or perhaps you have taken on a new challenge and things aren’t working out so well. Or both.
Pull back, then launch forward like a stone from a catapult. Retreat briefly into your competence to regain your composure. Take some time to build something that you know how to build. Then use that experience to recognize how far you’ve come and how much you are currently capable of.
An apprenticeship is a roller-coaster ride. You will experience the thrill of learning new technologies, leveraging your knowledge and creativity to deliver value to your customers. But you will also experience the heart-in-your-throat terror of perceiving just how little you know compared to the craftsmen and experts you meet along the way. It can be overwhelming, particularly when a deadline is looming or when you’re dealing with production issues. Take heart. This is a normal and inevitable phenomenon along The Long Road. Overcoming the fear of your own incompetence is the bridge between Expose Your Ignorance and Confront Your Ignorance.
This pattern is most relevant for people who have stretched themselves far beyond their ability. If your apprenticeship has you taking reasonable-sized steps forward, taking on gradually increasing responsibilities and technical complexity, then you may not need to take shelter in this pattern. But if you are really struggling or are barely keeping your head above water in The Deep End, look for opportunities to temporarily retreat. Sometimes you need to take one step back in order to take two steps forward. When you do this, it is important to turn that backward movement into forward momentum as quickly as possible. That forward momentum is revealed in your possession of more knowledge and greater skill than you had yesterday.
Going backward makes this a risky pattern use, however. Without a consciously chosen limit on how long and how far you retreat, you may find yourself merely surrendering to your fear of failure. It can be very comforting to delve ever deeper into the things you know how to do well. The rewards of expertise are tangible and immediate, but the risks may not surface until it’s too late to do anything about them. When your expertise eventually becomes obsolete, you will be forced to once again face the vast reaches of your ignorance, but this time you may be out of the habit of learning new things and starting again will be that much more painful. In this scenario, the solution to the feeling of being overwhelmed becomes worse than the problem.
To prevent this from happening, you must accept that this pattern is only a short-term fix while you gather your strength to bounce back. Set a time limit (or “timebox”) for yourself, such as “I will spend the next 10 minutes refactoring the JavaScript validation for this page before I optimize the SQL queries that provide the data.” Or “I will spend the next four hours implementing the command-line interface for this tool before I learn how to call this third-party SOAP API.” Or “I will spend the rest of today improving our test coverage before taking on the job of optimizing our code that is affected by Python’s Global Interpreter Lock.”
Another important aspect of this solution is to use the temporary break to seek support from the mentors and Kindred Spirits you have gathered around you. With their support and the boost of a recent display of competence, you should be better equipped to handle the inevitable bumps on the road when you try again.
Pick something self-contained that you know really well and reimplement it. For instance, Ade likes to implement caching algorithms because they can range from the trivial to the highly complex. They also allow opportunities to reinforce his intuition about design and algorithmic complexity.