My thoughts on keeping confident

For me, confidence is about being able to know I can do something. I think about it a lot.

I can find my confidence gets knocked very easily sometimes. I give myself a hard time if I’m not perfect instantly.

However, it’s not really surprising that this happens. If, like me, you work in a job where a large part of it it is doing new things, how do do you get to practise regularly?

If practise makes perfect, how do you get confident?

For me, I think it’s about being able to make the most of every opportunity to practise as you go. To not be fly-by-night, but to know when you’re operating around lots of change it’s a chance to practise on many different fronts.

If what you’re doing is new then it can be tempting to look for 30-hundred examples of vaguely relevant past experience. It can feel like you’re assembling a bit of a salad of expertise, borrowing from lots of different past experiences.

That’s OK. You almost certainly need to establish your experience a lot less than you realise.

I think that being able to manage and develop your confidence is one of the most important skills when you’re doing ‘thinking’ work.