Foreword:
In any enterprise, as a "worker", in the end, I can't restrain the commotion in my heart, shouting: Year-end award! Promotion! Raise!
At this time, with many years of experience, I couldn’t help but to question my soul:
"Year-end bonus? Promotion? Salary increase? Why? Every year you work with your previous skills and experience. Have your abilities improved?"
Heartbroken, old iron! The ability has not improved, it seems that you are almost going to be cold.
Now that it's time to talk about it, let's talk about the topic of "Qiantu" and "Future"-the expansion of the ability circle.
What is a circle of competence?
Ability circle, as the name suggests, refers to the scope of ability.
Buffett said: "The size of the circle of competence is not important. It is important that you know your circle of competence."
The issue of a person's ability boundary is mentioned here.
Here, take the programmer as an example to talk about the problem of ability boundaries.
When a programmer trains through some projects, his technical ability, problem-finding ability, analytical ability, and problem-solving ability are all improved to a certain extent. After reaching a stable level, he can become familiar with new tasks and do his best. His abilities match the problems that actually need to be solved.
Then, at this time, they are in the comfort zone of ability.
When the problems encountered are beyond their skills and cognition and cannot be solved with past experience, then, to solve these new problems, some breakthroughs are needed, and they need to get out of the comfort zone and enter the learning zone.
That is, the outer circular area in the figure.
The area outside the big circle in the figure is the unknown area. The unknown means confusion; challenging the unknown means pain and fear.
This area is often the black forest that you can’t see and can’t understand. Like the pyramids of ancient Egypt, it is full of unknown and mysterious atmosphere. Every time you break in, it may be a big adventure: you will enter a psychological panic. Area".
Is it through challenge and learning to break into the panic zone, or retreat to the familiar comfort zone? (Regarding the cognitive world, there is a very popular three-circle theory: comfort zone, learning zone, and panic zone.)
Why expand the circle of competence?
The boundaries of the circle of competence will change over time. The knowledge you have determines the size of your circle of competence.
However, the times are constantly changing. To adapt to new opportunities, more expertise is required. If it remains the same, some companies in the competence circle and even the required technology may disappear.
For example, in the rapidly changing Internet industry.
Since accessing the world Internet in 1994, China’s Internet has experienced more than 20 years of development.
After years of development in the entire industry, the Internet traffic dividend is gradually peaking, and the marginal cost of Internet companies to acquire customers is rising.
In order to compensate for the decline in traffic dividends, the entire industry has begun to deepen its inventory and actively explore new blue ocean markets.
In this context, there have been phenomena such as industry involution, consumer market "sinking", intensified cross-industry competition, and the shift of the focus of Internet enterprise business from C-side to B-side.
Under fierce competition, the fittest survive, and the uncomfortable are eliminated. Technology, market, user needs, etc. change rapidly with the change of the times, so to keep up with the times, changes must be made.
And expanding the circle of competence is the first step.
If a person is willing to jump out of the comfort zone, take the initiative to enter the learning zone, and accept challenges, then there is an opportunity to expand his circle of ability. If you want to expand the circle of competence, you need to continuously learn and make breakthroughs, improve professional knowledge, investment capabilities, etc.
Of course, as the comfort zone of the ability model becomes larger, the learning zone will also become larger, and the pain will naturally become larger.
If a person is unwilling to accept challenges, in this rapidly changing era, as he grows older, he may become a luxury in the workplace, and even be abandoned by this ever-changing era.
Anxiety of the motivated: the more you learn, the more confused?
I believe that many people have such anxiety: Why do you feel that the more you learn, the more you learn, the more anxious, and the more and more confused?
With such anxiety and confusion, it is easy to doubt and deny oneself, leading to abandonment halfway through.
Don't panic! The laws of human cognition tell you-the more you know, the more you don't know.
Even the human wise Socrates had the same doubts. Socrates once said, "The only thing I know is that I know nothing."
This reminds me of the Duck effect (the Dunning-Kruger effect), which is known as one of the cruelest effects in the history of human civilization.
Its causal logic is probably that the more ignorant people are, the less they know they don’t know, and the more confident they are (the peak of ignorance), the more they take it for granted, and the harder they are to make progress;
And the more knowledge/skills people know that they don’t know, the easier it is to feel lost (valley of despair), and the easier it is to improve (towards the slope of enlightenment).
Therefore, Russell said, the problem with the whole world is that fools and fanatics are always so sure of themselves, while wise men are full of doubts.
How to expand the comfort zone in practice?
A person's abilities can be enhanced through continuous training.
When you walk into the study area, you will feel pain, panic, and confusion at first, just like a person who hasn’t worked out for a long time and suddenly engages in a high-intensity exercise. During the first period of time, you will feel more painful. Uncomfortable and unsuitable.
However, after adapting, the body becomes stronger than before, and then the load is increased in a spiral manner, and the body will become stronger and stronger.
The Greek proverb says: "Pathemata mathemata", that is, learning knowledge must be painful, because you can learn only in painful practice.
In the same way, the ability circle expansion is the same.
For example, a programmer's programming, design framework, communication with people, team management and other abilities can all be improved through practice at work.
But often in the project, you will encounter some factors that hinder your growth.
For example, I believe most programmers have experienced this scenario.
In the process of the project, if a task can be completed normally, but also slightly challenging and requires a little effort to complete, then by completing this task, programmers can generally get corresponding exercises and gain a certain degree of growth. , This is conducive to the expansion of capacity boundaries.
But in reality, project managers usually take into account factors such as delivery time, work efficiency, and project cost. Few project managers take the initiative to allocate tasks like this.
More cases will be like this:
Project managers usually assign tasks based on the modules that programmers are good at or familiar with and the technologies they have mastered (that is, based on past experience assignments).
Under this circumstance, every programmer relies on his own knowledge, skills and experience in his comfort zone to do the tasks he is familiar with, unable to accept new challenges, and the expansion of the boundaries of the competence circle will naturally Will fall into a slow mire.
What to do in the face of the real dilemma?
If you want to get out of the quagmire and gain growth, you must break your inner fear, be brave, and take the initiative to walk to the learning/challenge area (to judge whether you are in the learning area, you can use the typical characteristic of "psychological pain" To judge. Most of the psychological pain is just the psychological reaction of people escaping from reality), to strive for and accept challenging tasks.
In the process of accepting the challenge, you may encounter difficult problems beyond your imagination, you may need to learn new knowledge and skills, you may need to work crazy overtime, and you may even fail in the end...
However, you therefore have more possibilities than others. Whether you succeed or fail, after this battle, your ability will be improved to a certain extent in the painful experience.
Share an example around you.
X was originally an iOS developer for an Internet company.
In each development process, he can quickly complete the task at hand. In the early years when he first joined the company, he was almost the most leisurely fishing party in the entire R&D department.
But after a long time like this, he gradually felt a little "waste".
Later, the company had a new project to develop, but there were not many tasks on iOS. He wants to take this opportunity to learn background-related development skills.
Therefore, while not affecting the original task development, he took the initiative to propose to the project manager that he wanted to take over some back-end module development, but because he had no background development experience, he could only start from the most basic.
During development, he took the initiative to provide assistance to back-end developers after completing the tasks at hand. If you don’t understand the knowledge, just work overtime to study and ask the relevant personnel...
Of course, the whole breakthrough process is extremely painful. However, "pain + reflection = progress".
After the whole project, he not only learned the skills of backstage development, but also exercised his communication skills, and also won praise from other colleagues.
Later, the company's business development needs, the company's new project needs to promote a programmer from the original team to be a project manager, and he once again took the initiative to stand in the learning zone.
Based on the goodwill of the previous leaders to him, coupled with his initiative, the candidate of the project manager finally fell to him.
Many people complain that the environment hinders growth, but your present is the result of your past choices; your future is the result of your current choices.
You can choose the environment and work style you like, now and in the future. If you keep complaining about the current environment and that life has deceived you, but you haven't made any changes, then life will continue to deceive you in the days to come.
After reaching 35+, still want to lie in the comfort zone and easily become a "screw" in the workplace?
The truth of the workplace is very heartbreaking: sorry! You are rusty.
Written at the end:
There is no cold winter that will not pass, and no spring will not come. The past 2020 was an extraordinary year for people all over the world. Everyone is fighting the epidemic bravely and bravely. Here we are here to encourage ourselves. Palm it, 2021 has come as promised, set a good goal and continue to grow.
May you and I meet and you will find something! Welcome to follow the WeChat public account: Cheng Yuan Yifei.