> The world needs more people who are two days into learning something writing about the problems of people who are one day in.<p>~ <a href="https://twitter.com/patio11/status/803825771349426176" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/patio11/status/803825771349426176</a>
See also:<p><i>Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind is a book of teachings by the late Shunryu Suzuki, a compilation of talks given to his satellite Zen center in Los Altos, California. Published in 1970... helping readers to steer clear from the trap of intellectualism...it is one of the two most influential books on Zen in the west.</i><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_Mind,_Beginner%27s_Mind" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_Mind,_Beginner%27s_Mind</a>
The "no bad questions" thing is big with me. I remember about 40 years ago talking to a smart latinist retraining into IT who said she felt hugely shamed and embarrassed at work having to ask what an IDE ribbon cable was.<p>Whoever was teaching them, needed a good talking to. Sure, in hindsight it's obvious, but also not.
I'm a better beginner than an expert at anything I do. I mainly attribute this to the excitement around learning and the rate of returns I'm the initial part of the learning journey.
Most people become rigid in thinking and lose elasticity in the problem, solution, and containing domains — especially when hardened onto specific workflows and process. We are all guilty of it.<p>Consulting addresses this at the org level — they are the "smart dumb group" that will unlock lateral and z thinking.<p>--<p>On a personal level, do not think in failures or successes. Think in learning and level gains. "Success" as per your definition is a side-effect of reaching higher and higher levels of ability. Learning ("failure") is a major path.
One of the most important lessons I've learned from fiction is from the relentless joy in spite of, or maybe because of, repeated failure in some stories.<p>The most common source of this trope in my memory is in anime, but it's everywhere, in every culture and narrative medium I've experienced.<p>Failing is not a negative in itself. Sometimes the consequences are a negative. Usually though, there's a lesson to be learned that's a net positive.<p>Something something Edison.
I think the most valuable articles I’ve written were in the beginning of my development career. I struggled to do so many things and was able to document them with a beginner’s mind. Most of those things are so easy now they don’t even make it to the “prerequisites” of an article I write. What I write now reaches a smaller, more focused and advanced audience.
> Your lack of understanding is a valuable attribute that goes away as you gain experience<p>Not necessarily true. Beginner's mind can be embraced by anyone who stays humble. Some of my favorite people to work with have ample experience, but approach each new challenge from the ground up.
I'm routinely stymied by the projects I take on. I learn new stuff every day. It annoys me to be treated like a n00b, but that comes with the territory. I don't let it stop me.<p>I write about it here: <a href="https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/thats-not-what-ships-are-built-for/" rel="nofollow">https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/thats-not-what-ships...</a>
> If you don't feel safe to ask questions and make mistakes at work, it might be time to find a place that you can.<p>There is basically no such job. You can find jobs where you are allowed to make small mistakes, but no job will let you make big mistakes without lots of experience and big mistakes is the important part to learn. If you want to learn big things quickly you have to do it on your own and not at a job.
I have once spent four sprints shipping and then unshipping a minor feature because no one on the dev team explained an implicit invariant in the object model, despite repeated questioning. The unit tests ran fine and people rubber-stamped each successive revision without hesitation. Then the change would land on our scary haunted staging instance, and the release manager would come knocking at my desk.<p>Gatekeeping is totally a thing.
Can you be a beginner like this and even still be able to get a job these days? It seems like the industry as a whole has entered a new phase of professionalization and scientific recruitment that makes attitudes like this obsolete.