Make sure you’re not dividing people into the camps of “competent” and “incompetent” too strongly. Yes, competence varies between individuals. But it also varies between areas for a given individual. And it varies day-to-day.
Today I was getting ready to go for a bike ride. I filled a bottle of water, got the bike out, discovered that it had a flat tire and I couldn’t fix it, and put the bike away. After I couldn’t find the bottle of water. I looked everywhere, twice. An hour later I realized I had put it in the bike’s bottle holder while I had the bike out.
This is normal. Everyone makes mistakes all the time. I’m a programmer, and one of the things you notice is that no matter how skilled the person, and no matter how trivial the program, they’ll write buggy code. Usually a mistake every few lines.
One of the points of the sequence is to try to notice your own mistakes and your own biases, so that you can triage against them. As opposed to digging your heels in and refusing to admit you’ve done anything wrong, which is a common alternate strategy. (I’ve also found meditation to help with some of this.)
Make sure you’re not dividing people into the camps of “competent” and “incompetent” too strongly. Yes, competence varies between individuals. But it also varies between areas for a given individual. And it varies day-to-day.
Today I was getting ready to go for a bike ride. I filled a bottle of water, got the bike out, discovered that it had a flat tire and I couldn’t fix it, and put the bike away. After I couldn’t find the bottle of water. I looked everywhere, twice. An hour later I realized I had put it in the bike’s bottle holder while I had the bike out.
This is normal. Everyone makes mistakes all the time. I’m a programmer, and one of the things you notice is that no matter how skilled the person, and no matter how trivial the program, they’ll write buggy code. Usually a mistake every few lines.
One of the points of the sequence is to try to notice your own mistakes and your own biases, so that you can triage against them. As opposed to digging your heels in and refusing to admit you’ve done anything wrong, which is a common alternate strategy. (I’ve also found meditation to help with some of this.)