I am, by all accounts, a very competent person. Lest you think I’m being arrogant, please note that Webster’s defines competent as having requisite or adequate abilities or qualities. I am very good at following directions, learning quickly, and accomplishing tasks in a timely manner. It is one of my favorite qualities, and it has served me very well, but recently, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking on the dark sides of competency.
The Curse
Once upon a time, I worked for a company that was lead by a crazy dreamer. Though inarguably a genius at her craft, she wasn’t much on the limitations of reality. She surrounded herself with people who kept her happy and unaware, and they passed down the task of dream transmutation to others without ever asking how much actual work it took to make those dreams come true. Anyone who seemed remotely competent was given more work than they could actually handle, and was derided when it took longer to perform these miracles than thought. If for some reason you actually pulled it off, someone else took the credit, and you just got more and more impossible tasks to accomplish. We (somewhat) jokingly referred to this as “The Curse of Competence.”
Competence and Boundaries
While most of us enjoy being seen as someone who is capable, others may see this as a reason to dump work on you. And we live in a culture that welcomes it. “If you want something done, ask a busy person!” is a popular business directive. Being overly busy has become something we aspire to – it’s a sign of our success. If our task lists are never ending – every time you cross one thing off, four more tasks spring up in its place – well, boy howdy, then we are some useful and productive workers! And how many of us are the “responsible kid” in the family or the “always there” friend? We spend so much of our lives trying to prove our usefulness to society that it’s exhausting. On the flip side of that is the envy – “How come Bob never has to do this? It’s his department!” or “Becky was home, why didn’t Mom call her?” It’s the easiest way to set up an Us vs. Them rivalry, and a good way to guarantee enough martyr complexes to fill a megachurch.
The key to fixing that is setting boundaries. This is not an easy task for most of us. At work, bosses are none too fond of being told that you can’t do something because you’ve already worked 70 hours this week and you are fried. Hell, we even work on our vacations; so much so, it’s become an expectation. At home, it’s tough to break the cycle of being the one on call for your family when that’s the role you accepted as a child. But unless you want to live out your days as a doormat for someone else’s crap, you have to speak up and let people know what you can and cannot reasonably do.
Competence and Practice
Given that I see myself as a very competent person, I generally think that I can learn fast and accomplish tasks easily. Oh, but when I can’t…..well, that’s a whole ‘nother kettle of fish, my friends. For example, take this blog. From everything you read these days, any monkey with base typing skills can set up a website, drum up a bunch of followers, and make buckets of money with little to no effort. And so, I believed, could I. I mean, how hard could it be?
Lemme know when you stop laughing.
It has been one big discouraging slog. I’ve even abandoned it several times because I couldn’t get things to work how I wanted, or when I did get something to work, no one ever bothered to look at it. Not even my mother. None of it has been easy, even the parts I felt sure that I would enjoy.
I do this all the time – if something doesn’t come easily to me, I will drop it or decide it’s not for me, or worse, tell myself that I’m stupid because I can’t do something that should be simple. I know I’m not alone in this. We all have things we just tell ourselves that we’re not good at. “Oh, I’m just no good at cooking/public speaking/networking.” It’s mostly because we either:
a.) want someone to do it for us
b.) don’t want to look foolish, or
c.) decided that we just don’t want to put the effort in
It’s a never ending cycle unless you decide to actually do something. I keep coming back to this because I have big plans, and I have much more to learn and do before it’s what I want. They say that practice makes perfect, so I’m practicing. And hoping that I don’t look too foolish.
Competence and Loss
This is the side of competence that struck me most when I gave it some thought. Since I view myself as competent, my friends and family do, too. Sometimes even more than I do. That’s great, but it’s a little harder to ask for help when everyone thinks you have your shit together. When bad times come, you have to ask for help when you are least able to.
Last year, I lost my Dad and my stepmom on the same day. And then I lost both of my aunts within the two months after that. And then I lost my job. And all of that sucked out loud and for a very long time.
People want to help, but with subjects like this, they don’t know how. So they resort to “Let me know what I can do” or “Tell me what you need.” For a person who is grieving, this is too much work. After my parents’ death, I needed a lot of things and a lot of help, but goddamn if I could have told you what any of it was. I had two lives to wrap up, a houseful of things to sell, heirs to appease, and attorneys, bankers, and government agencies to deal with. And all of this was in a state 1300 miles away from my home. I didn’t have the strength to break it all down and pass out task lists. Because I didn’t ask for help, I didn’t really get any.
When you lose a job, you initially think, “Well, this shouldn’t be too difficult. I have mad skills! I shouldn’t have any trouble finding my dream job!” Um, about that… if you haven’t had to find a job in over 20 years, you will discover that it’s a lot more difficult than it used to be. You make a lot of calls, reach out to your network to see if anyone knows of anything, and ask people for help. And they’re willing to help, but they have lives and jobs, too. They’re not going to spend all day working the phones on your behalf, nor should they. But if you don’t know someone at a company that’s hiring, or have some crazy cool marketing skills for getting your resume some attention, it’s easy to be ignored. The magic of the technology is that you can apply for and be rejected for a job within minutes without ever talking to anyone at the company. Which isn’t the greatest of all feelings, lemme tell you.
There will always be times that leave you feeling somewhat less than competent, and may have you questioning your choices. But you shouldn’t. Being competent got you to where you are, and will eventually haul you out of that big hole of suck. Because you have mad skills. Seriously.
But you have to do the work, set those boundaries, ask for help, and practice practice practice.
Just because you’re competent doesn’t mean that things are easy.
