When everything is new, growth moves at lightning speed. “Hey, you’re a natural!” It’s all new, you don’t care, you just go out there, try, fail, and try again – and you keep improving. But then to leap with growth, you need to learn the right techniques, focus on your tools, iterate, iterate, iterate, and you start to worry about failing – because hey, look how far you’ve come, who wants to take a step…
Here is the weather in Ottawa a few days ago. Add in the wind chill, and we’re keeping cool at -35C. The conditions aren’t great, the conditions never are, they are never perfect. But we keep working, keep showing up, keep putting in the time. Don’t let the weather or the conditions get you down.
Two weeks ago, I was flooded with articles on specialization in all that you do. This week, I’m being flooded with articles on generalization in all that you do. We are still in the early period of adoption of AI, which means no one really knows. Learn, focus on your work, identify opportunities for growth, block out the noise, and move forward.
Since the new year, everyone on my LinkedIn feed has become an expert. I don’t know what happened over Xmas, but everyone is now an expert. Which is scary, because if everyone is an expert, who is doing the learning? And if we all became experts over the 3 week Xmas break, why aren’t we selling that? And if you learned everything, how did you apply it to your job immediately to become an expert?…
I remember when we had to do this in grade school, when the teacher would ask us to mark our own work. Some would give themselves an A+. Others would be too hard on themselves, almost failing themselves. And some would give enough to say – “yeah, good start, but you have more to do.” The ones that didn’t give themselves an A+ are the ones that learned from an early age, it’s not the…