One of the things i wish i was taught from the start was doing things well. The task you choose to do needs to be done in a complete manner. What do i mean by that? imagine you were cooking something, different vegetables require different ways and different tools to chop them. You can’t chop an onion the same way as a potato. Before you start chopping, you figure out what vegetables you need for the dish, then you select all the tools you need, and proceed to chop each vegetable, do you see how methodical it is, despite it being seen as common sense?
Too often for things like finding a job we are trained to not be this way. We are trained to just start chopping with no thoughts on what are the things required. When you are looking for a job, you just hope university prepares you for placements, and hopefully a company takes you in. You don’t understand what kind of job i want, or what are the skills i want for myself. You blindly apply for jobs on linkedin upon seeing the role title, but do you take the moment to think about, okay if i’m applying for a job of this sort, what are the ingredients i need in my resume to be selected, is there a better way to reach out to the company, maybe i can do something to draw their attention etc.,
This of course is what the nerds call “High Agency” and i believe it’s not spread to the world enough. This idea that you can take all sorts of actions to increase the probability of things happening in your favour is extremely powerful.
What’s interesting is trying to figure out why we default to doing things badly, there are two factors i can think off, one is not caring enough. You simply don’t feel like you are accountable for the task, you just care that it’s over. This can mainly be solved by giving the task importance, if you hold the task in high esteem, you will automatically hold yourself to a high standard and will work to ensure it’s done well. Second is being conditioned to follow rules, which makes the very thought of taking an action other than what’s expected so revolting. I suspect schools are to blame for this. You can’t have an institute that encourages you to break the very rules it created. Think of the chaos it causes. The hope is that it’s not strict enough for you to become a mindless robot, and you bend the rules as much as you can. Universities however are an open ground where you have enough freedom to break the rules and you probably should.
How do you break out of the conditioning? Exposure to new ideas and being open to them seem to be the solution. If i never see someone working efficiently, i will never know what it looks like, and i therefore can’t strive for it. People who aren’t flexible in their ways of thinking are probably worse than people who don’t know how to do things differently and i think they cause more harm to the quality of the outcome. Note that you can still be open to ideas and stick to a single opinion about something, they’re not mutually exclusive. So how do you get exposed to the best? i think it’s simple, anything you do, try to observe and learn from the person who is known for doing it really well.
Personally twitter and my workplace has been such a place for exposure for me, just the number of people doing things that they logically shouldn’t be seen doing, is wild. While it is a small bubble, in the domain i work in, these are the best people. Just seeing them do things is quite inspiring. There are references for every domain, but your job is to actively look for better performers and stay curious. That is the way to do things well.