Practice Being a Beginner While You're Still Good at Your Job

If you've been good at your job for years, it may have been a long time since you were bad at anything. You can change that on purpose: choose something you're bad at and learn it while your work is still going well. What you practice is how to keep going when you don't understand yet, how to ask questions that don't make you look good, and how to live with work that comes out below your own standard. A later move into a new role or field may ask the same of you.

After leaving ToursByLocals around age 40, I spent time learning languages, studying quantitative finance and building QuickInsight. In You Can Start Changing Careers Before You Know What Comes Next I wrote about how learning changed what I could imagine doing. This post is about what it costs to be bad at something when you're used to being good at your work, and why I keep choosing it.

What you're practicing

At work you probably know what good looks like, and you can usually produce it. As a beginner you can't. You don't understand things other people seem to get. You ask questions that sound basic. You get easy things wrong, sometimes after you've understood them.

That can be harder when your sense of yourself rests on being competent. It's easy to put off learning something for years because you don't want to look bad at it. Practicing means letting yourself be bad at something even after you've built an identity as someone who knows what they're doing.

Embarrassment can come with it. It isn't the goal, and feeling uncomfortable doesn't mean you're making progress.

Japanese, with a modest goal

I've studied languages on Duolingo: French, Portuguese, Italian and Japanese. Japanese is still very hard for me. It has three writing systems, I make mistakes, and I often don't understand.

What I want from it is modest: the satisfaction of going to Japan and communicating a little with people there, and opening my mind to language structures I didn't know. When the goal is that size, being bad at something costs you little, which makes it a good place to practice.

Quantitative finance, where it stays hard

I started quantitative finance with very weak math. It was hard and it still is. I've had to review high-school math.

Studying options and derivatives, I often don't understand the charts or the mathematical expressions. With put-call parity and synthetic positions, I drew the payoff charts on paper, tracing them very slowly, like a child, so I could answer which synthetic position a given configuration was. The exercises came out right. The abstraction behind those concepts still takes time to settle in my head well enough to apply it.

Studying interest rates, I made mistakes with decimals when converting percentages. I had reasoned the exercise correctly, and I still felt embarrassed that I hadn't gotten it right.

I worked through five chapters of John Hull's Options, Futures, and Other Derivatives, with the tests. I trade options with spread strategies, and I'm still a beginner in the math I'm studying. I like being one, and I keep advancing at my own pace.

I don't pressure myself to understand everything perfectly from the start. Things take the time they take, and I don't expect to know everything perfectly even after I've studied it.

Three ways to practice it

Show what you don't know. Say you don't understand. Ask the basic question. Show unfinished work to someone who can correct it. When you're used to having the answers, this is the part you're most likely to avoid.

Act before you feel competent. Try the exercise before you've finished the chapter. Say the sentence before you're sure of the grammar. Where a mistake could hurt someone or can't be undone, get competent first.

Keep going while your work is below your standard. What you produce will be worse than what you'd accept from yourself at your job. Do the next exercise anyway.

Learning it without a plan

Learning like this can be worth it without leading anywhere professionally. If you can now say a few sentences in another language, or work through a kind of problem you couldn't touch before, that's reason enough to have learned it.

As I keep learning, I want to hold on to a beginner's innocence and curiosity. In my career I've seen brilliant people put a ceiling on themselves through arrogance. They put more energy into looking brilliant than into being brilliant and learning from other people and from new things.

If a later move puts you in a new role or field, you may be a beginner there too. You'll go into it having been one recently.

Before your next move

Pick one thing you're bad at and would like to be less bad at. Set a cadence you can keep in a normal week, even a short one. Every few months, write down what you can do now that you couldn't before, and one thing that's still hard.

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FAQ

Is it normal to feel embarrassed being a beginner again as an adult?

It happened to me. Studying interest rates, I made mistakes with decimals when converting percentages, and I felt embarrassed even though I had reasoned the exercise correctly. I kept studying.

Do I need a career goal to start learning something new?

No. What you practice is being a beginner, and that doesn't depend on where the learning goes. If you already know the direction you want, aim your learning at the gap.

What should I pick if I want to practice being a beginner?

Something you're bad at, would like to be less bad at, and can get wrong without hurting anyone. A language with no deadline works, and so does a subject that needs math you've forgotten. Set a cadence you can keep in a normal week.

What do I do when something stays hard for a long time?

I don't pressure myself to understand everything perfectly from the start. With options, I drew payoff charts slowly on paper until I could answer the exercises, and the concepts still took time to settle well enough to apply. Things take the time they take.

Is it too late to relearn math as an adult?

I started quantitative finance with very weak math. It was hard and it still is, and I've had to review high-school math. I worked through five chapters of Hull's Options, Futures, and Other Derivatives with the tests. At the quantitative level I'm still a beginner, and I keep advancing at my own pace.

QuickInsight is informational only. It is not medical, legal, financial, or other regulated advice. If you are in crisis, get human help first.