a Series of 10 — when experience becomes a liability

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By my count I am 8 blogs away from having written 500 blogs on my two websites. I thought it might be an interesting idea to write these remaining blogs based on the common threads that have woven themselves through the last 492 I have written — and with that said, “a Series of 10” will continue with a blog on experience.

I love having experience under my belt because there are so many advantages:

  • I know things and have a foundation of skills that serve me well.

  • I have seen things that offer insights and perspective.

  • I know success and failure — both extremely valuable. And as time goes on, there is more success than failure in my experience (pun intended).

  • I’ve developed pattern recognition and the ability to solve problems quickly.

  • I’ve earned some awards and recognition along the way as I leveraged my experience.

To be honest, if I’m not careful I could (and maybe have) developed a bubble or maybe even a personal dogma that has me believing that if I am good at one thing I’m also good at everything else (overconfidence bias or arrogance). I could also be losing the realization that knowledge and circumstances are not static and what has worked in the past may not work in the future. I may have become arrogant.

There is a concern that experience, and all the value that comes from the hard work to achieve it, could become a liability and slowly detach me from the ever-present reality of progress.

There are mountains of examples where “experience” just does not apply anymore, and even worse, situations where my experience somewhat applies but I’m haunted by mistakes because of assumptions based on skills or insight that just doesn’t quite fit anymore. Doing a DIY project using old tools when there are modern and more efficient ones available — using a ratchet wrench instead of a classic wrench comes to mind when you have a large number of bolts to tighten.

Again I will stress, I love having experience but it’s better to think of it as an innate skill that I have developed and must remember that nothing is static. Progress is happening even when I myself may not be progressing and I must stay fresh with new ideas and situations. It is better to rally behind the characteristics that helped develop the experience in the first place then rely on the experience itself.

  • Curiosity — search out new ideas, information and situations to develop your knowledge base; if it’s new, explore it.

  • Tenacity — work hard, take challenges on, and be comfortable with being uncomfortable.

  • Flexibility — figuratively be able to pivot from being correct to being incorrect; if your way of thinking is not generating results, change it. Right and wrong are constructs that keep you from solving the problem.

  • Cooperation — never is anything solved by one person. You need others to help do what you need to get done.

  • Adaptability — a cousin to flexibility. Situations will change so you need to change with the situation.

  • Trustworthiness — this is a quiet characteristic that people rarely talk about. If you are trustworthy, opportunities will be presented to you that lead to continued experience development in areas that you may never have appreciated.

Experience is a reflection of the past and potential for the future — resting on your laurels and experience just gets you left behind.

Be humble,

iamgpe

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