Career growth and inefficiency

When you start doing something new, you are usually pretty bad at it. Once you figure out how to do it right, you stop being bad. With practice, you’ll become good, and the work will become effortless. If you are rapidly growing to new heights, you won’t be spending a lot of time on such effortless tasks. You’ll keep on moving to newer problems and you will likely find yourself struggling again and again.

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It’s counterintuitive, but the faster you grow, the more time you spend being inefficient. If you’re too hard on yourself for being inefficient, your growth won’t be fast. Newer challenges will make you feel bad, and you’ll involuntarily resist growth.

If you want rapid growth, you need to change the way you assess yourself. Avoid thinking “It took me 2 full days to write a short business proposal.” Such a thought causes negativity. Instead, you may think “I have finished writing my first ever business proposal. Until today I was only an engineer, but now I am growing into also becoming a businessperson.” Feed on the positives rather than focusing on the negatives.

You need to consciously derive happiness and pride from the challenges that enable your growth. If you expect yourself to be flawless every time no matter what, your growth will be slow and painful.

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PS: Implicit assumption here is that you can tell good results from bad: either you are capable of assessing it yourself or you have people who will give you reliable feedback. This post is not for people who declare victory too quickly even when the quality of their work is poor.