This article is a follow-up to the one I posted yesterday, which was basically an update in which I talked about a situation that has been going on at work. The short version is that we're a bit understaffed and because of that things might get a bit chaotic there.
Because we're 4 people short, we, the ones that still come to work every day, have to do more than we used to up to this point. When it comes to myself, I already did two jobs, one in the morning, and another in the evening. I still have my morning tasks that I had until now, but once they're done I have to do a job that I didn't do before, which involves making the salads for the people who order food.
The way it works in our restaurant, and in quite a lot of other places, is that the clients who order food get a salad before the main course. I initially thought that this was a standard in the industry, but apparently not all restaurants work like this.
Anyway, the person who was taking care of the salads, and all the tasks that revolve around that particular job, such as making the sauce for each salad, cutting certain vegetables, preparing soup and other things, got Covid, and they asked me to fill up that part of the kitchen until he's back. The only problem is that I never did that before. It didn't matter.
Today was my first day in that position, and although I thought that this day will be horrific and that I'll fail a lot, I, surprisingly, did fairly well. My girlfriend, who works in the same restaurant as me told me that quite a few people were surprised by my performance today and complimented me.
All of it was quite surprising to me. Not only the compliments, but my own ability to do something I did not expect to be able to do, something I did not do before, something I knew very little about. Despite my pessimistic expectations, I did well.
This doesn't necessarily mean that I'm better than others and that I can do whatever I decide or must be done. Others have done the same job very well, with little to no preparation. What this means is that most of us are capable of a lot more than we think. Fear and anxiety just keeps us from being able to see that.
I had the same realization a few years ago when I began learning 3D modelling. Until then I thought that working with a software like Maya or Blender would require a lot of knowledge about math, physics and a lot of technical things that I didn't think I'd be able to learn or understand. That type of thinking kept me from giving that activity a try.
When I did finally begin to learn how to use Blender using some tutorials online, and I managed to create a very simple scene featuring a doughnut after watching Andrew Price's tutorials, I was quite amazed. I went from not knowing how to making anything in any 3D software and thinking that such an activity was reserved only for very smart people to actually making a basic scene in a software I never thought I'd be able to learn. I felt great.
The same applied to writing or coding. And it applied to my job, in general. I never thought I would be able to work in a kitchen, to be quick and precise and to prepare food for people. And yet, when I was forced, by my circumstances, to get a job in this industry, I suddenly found myself capable of doing all of that, after enough time spent learning and understanding my job
So here's an idea that might be worth thinking about: you can do way more than you think, if only you get the courage to try and to persist through the learning phase. If you can get over the fear of failing and looking stupid, you'll realize that you're much more competent than you ever thought.