What was the basis of my professional confidence before burnout?
What I'm Up To (aligning), What I Reflected On (professional confidence), and What's Occupying My Mind (Commas)- all part of Allen's Friday Flights
Hello Professionally Curious One!
I missed last week.
I was too absorbed playing a new video game.
I jest.
I was actually too lazy.
Cheers,
Allen
Past Publications
What I’m Up To
TL;DR: Lining up the dominoes
The Things:
Selanne Steak Tavern is a great place in Laguna Beach to get a great ambiance, great drinks, and great Wagyu steak. Best part? It’s not dark. I recommend the Lord Stanley’s cut.
Jedi Survivor came out and I’m hesitant to get it for PC because I’ve heard it’s terribly not at all performance optimized which translates to “not at all fun”.
Horizon Forbidden West’s first DLC came out where I can explore Los Angeles. It was extremely short (3-4 hours of content tops), but insane PS5 graphics.
Was down in La Jolla and ate Javiers. The ambiance is insane at Javiers, and the chips are also crazy. A lot of construction though.
Lifetime Fitness San Clemente is an insane outdoor athletic club that I didn’t participate in and instead got my ass handed to in a new “MB360 Class” where most of the participants were Lifetime Coaches/Trainers.
I’m half way through my AG1 supply and I am seeing some benefits to gut and energy throughout my days. But it could be that it’s Spring.
This Vietnamese Seafood Grill, Oc & Lau, is great for all kinds of seafood fans. The grilled hot plates are heavenly.
I find this the most hilarious NFT project this year.
Do you like Marshall from HIMYM? Then you’ll immediately love this Apple TV Show - Shrinking.
What was the basis of my professional confidence before burnout?
TL;DR: Where learning was the currency, my professional confidence as an economy was hitting marginal returns on its growth, which would then lead to its collapse.
The Learning Currency
When I was going through college, it was often repeated that I as a college student had no real skills, and that I should carry a high level of awareness gratefulness of getting a job.
I’m a broke college student with not that much marketable skills apparently, besides being a sponge, and that all my skills would be learned on the job. (this isn’t 100% true, I did organize several 100-150 LAN Parties, plus help run a 300 person org, and was, for a second, I was a horse).
The basis of my professional confidence is that I had no basis, and I’m basically teletubby entering the workforce and you can pay me in learning.
“Will work to learn”.
The Experience is the Learning
Every work thing would be a learning opportunity, and the difficulty and challenges in itself were the learning opportunity, no matter what they were. After all, I needed more experience so that I could be confident.
When I started working my first big boi career, I realized that I was entering an environment where there was a constant high level of “this is going to be a learning opportunity” and “it’s not about the pay or the hours” (even though I was salaried, if you calculate my hourly rate, you’d find that quite depressing), but about the fulfillment you get and the chance to take on such hard things.
I would spread the mantra all around.
I was the kind of guy that tried to find a new insight in every thing.
After a few busy seasons in motion, I found that I had created this relationship that work will teach me all the things. I go to work to learn, and if I’m not working, I’m not learning. Alternatively, if I’m not learning, I’m not working.
Basis of my professional confidence was in all the things I learned.
A couple more busy seasons and I found that I had a huge dissatisfaction with skills I previously picked up as they were already learned, and there was nothing else to learn - thus they had no more value. My basis in my own professional confidence was at risk, as the amount of things I could learn were diminishing, and it felt like what I already knew wasn’t going to provide a rich future.
I mean that literally.
So I sought more opportunities.
I went and found different projects and services to engage in - to expand that professional confidence. I volunteered outside. I took classes. I created this mindset of picking up new skills for the sake of picking up skills.
In the same was someone who thinks “technology is the answer to all my problems”, I thought picking up new skills was the answer to getting better careers, derisking being pigeon holed, and overall, it was going to save the economy powering my professional confidence.
It did not.
It was like Madagascar’s inflating economy - a lot of quantity of things learned, but root issues aren’t addressed. The basis of my professional confidence was not being addressed.
The Basis of My Professional Confidence
Looking back, I realized that I had based my professional confidences on the things that I had learned, but not the skill of learning itself. This would go on to wreck havoc as I tried to apply for new jobs and reroll my career.
My then professional confidence made this sequence true:
I do not know, and I am being paid in learning opportunities to find out.
I can’t expect great learning opportunities without sacrificing
sanitysalary for it.I’m not worth a higher salary or cost rate because I don’t already know the answer to things (or have “experience”).
Here are some variations of the above formula:
How certain and confident do you have to be before you would willfully apply for a role? What do you base that certainty and confidence on?
How certain and confident in yourself do you have to be to “command a higher salary”, and what do you base that certainty and confidence on?
How many of you would apply for a job to work in crypto financials, without knowing crypto accounting?
Essentially all scenarios above converge on this thought: “I don’t know how to do it, so don’t pay me as much to try.”
Primary Incentive Currency
Stepping away from a single income job where learning was the primary incentive currency made me realized that I was in vicious environment that was more than willing to "throw you at all kinds of challenges and problems”, and equally ready to “not really reward you monetarily, or really in any other way, for it”.
This can work for maybe the first 3 to 5 years, if you can withstand the massive tsunami of learning this implies.
But after I weathered the learning storms, I began to hit marginal returns for learning. My professional confidence economy wasn’t expanding or growing. It was at risk.
And then it plateaued.
And then cliff dived in the same fashion as the LUNA/TERRA 2022 crash.
I would eventually go on and quit my job, extra crispy and burn out.
Why would I quit a job where I was constantly learning all kinds of things?
I wasn’t benefiting from learning in the workplace (no incentive / well is dry)
The basis of my professional confidence was flawed because it required learning (in the short term, this would give a growth spurt, followed with it leveling out).
It is with that realization I would go on a career break, and evolve what the basis of my professional confidence is.
What's Occupying My Mind?
Thinking about the engineer who who selected all the data and applied a numerical format that would give commas to years.
2,023 looks a lot weirder than 2023.