Well, technology is paving a new path.
A way for change right from the way we work to the way we think.
Most importantly, it creates a new wave of opportunities both in the job and business world.
And so the question lies, is it the thing that looks scary?
Well, no it’s something that should excite you.
Something that should challenge you. Well, keep reading this as this is essential.
Hey, you beautiful people welcome back. I hope you are doing well and I am sending a lot of positivity to all of you.
The Power of Good Enough
Every individual is different.
Right from the way of thinking and interpreting to the way of getting the work done. The top performers are those who have a high IQ and have a high EQ.
Top performers get priority in life if they play their cards right but the truth is being a top performer requires a tremendous amount of dedication.
Putting years of your life into mastering one single thing.
But if you see the other side of it there are a couple of problems with this ideology such as:-
It takes years to master:-
One such example is this book called Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell and in it, he explains that to master a particular skill takes 10,000 hours.
Could be anything like composing a piece of music, drawing a canvas, writing, etc.
But one thing is clear to become world-class at anything you need to put in a lot of effort, time, and dedication cause natural talent doesn’t push you as far as you might think.
Gifted people find it easier to learn and practice but still, they have to practice a lot.
The skill that you are learning today might turn out to be obsolete:-
Mastering a skill indeed takes around 9 to 12 months where you learn and capitalize on it.
You see we’re living in times of immense change and that’s the difference between an early adopter and bystanders, this increases every single day.
But if you see the other side of it, the barrier of entry shrinks each day, and we see it all the time. Nowadays, people are getting hired right from Twitter to Google.
So, it doesn’t matter from which college you graduated and what you have learned in four years of college, people are learning in just four weeks by themselves.
That’s called Self Learning, the ability to learn on your own.
That’s where micro-credentials come in.
A new form of learning and this type of knowledge is outperforming the traditional means of education.
With that said it used to be damn risky to be an early adopter in any field and taking 3 to 5 years to learn something new might not be enough to become a world-class and it’s long to learn that one particular thing.
Make sure that you do that skill for the next decade:-
Let’s elaborate this with an example let’s say you wanna be a world-class programmer and want to take that route of becoming one of the greatest programmers, so in this case you need to make sure that the skill that you are learning is evergreen as compared to how everything is done right now to how it’s done decades ago.
You see nothing is the same, things change rapidly with time and this is the thing that people find it hard to change career paths down the line because they get too attached to what they’re doing and don’t want to take that step. Don’t want to update themselves.
That’s the power of good enough as it comes with versatility and a time frame. It takes a short amount of time to get good enough which will allow you to be flexible in what you decide to do.
Now let’s dive deep and understand,
What does “Good Enough” actually mean?
Well, it depends on the context.
Being good enough has a different set of values.
Generally speaking, you’re good enough if someone is willing to pay you to do it or if you want a hard number you’re good enough if you’re in the top 20 in your field.
And if you think that’s a high number you underestimate how average people usually are in the traditional job market.
Being good enough means that your standard and consistent performance is well above your minimum requirements.
It’s not just about knowing fundamentals, but most importantly it’s about mastering them only after grasping up the fundamentals cause the devil lies in details.
The devil is in basics.
In simple terms, less than mastery and more important being consistent and that’s how you become good enough and that will make you great.
How to get Good Enough?
One of the most frustrating in the journey of becoming good enough is that you kind of suck at the beginning and it’s pretty hard to continue to do something if the first time you try it and turns out to be a major failure.
It is easy to get overwhelmed by the amount of information and subset of skills you supposedly need to know but that’s because we are humans and we love to overcomplicate what we are doing.
You ask any person with a job exactly what they’re doing and they’ll tell you one of two things nothing much or a lot.
You see it is very complicated a lot of work and I don’t recommend it.
People don’t want to tell you that what they’re doing isn’t that hard.
But if you are smart and know the right approach then here’s the thing, to be good enough it takes around 30 to 50 hours to get good enough at any skill but not all skills such as brain or heart surgery, in that case, you’d like to be a little good enough but those are considered as outliers.
So, here are a couple of things that are required to be good enough:-
Access to information:-
Surprisingly, it’s free!
We live in such a world where you can get an endless amount of information on the internet.
If today there’s something that you cannot find then you suck at it either at using Google search or you don’t know the right person to ask.
Or if anything you should have the problem of too much information then in that case you need to be good at curating the knowledge.
Important to have a clear idea of what good enough means for you:-
So, if you want to write a piece of a blog for your client or yourself then see what a good piece of blog looks like.
If you want to create a piece of content and explore creativity see what a good enough video looks like.
If you want to design some illustration/canvas then see what a good enough illustration/canvas looks like.
I would love to narrate a quote from my favorite book Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon and here it goes, “Nothing is original. Everything is a remix of something.”
You see by looking and observing multiple resources you get a clear picture and goal.
Deconstruct the skills:-
In this case, you either deconstruct it yourself or ask someone good enough at it to help you out. Here’s a story that will help you in deconstructing.
Benjamin Franklin as a kid sucked at writing but he wanted to get better at it and how did he do that?
Well, he taught himself how to write and it was pretty simple he took the articles from the spectator which had some of the best articles and he read them and then started taking simple notes.
Then he re-engineered the process and tried to recreate the articles that were based upon his notes and then compared his work with the originals.
In this process, he found what mistakes he made and what can be done to match the quality of articles from the spectator.
And what did he observe was the flow of his limited vocabulary that was holding him back and then he focused on that.
In his words, “I might possibly in time come to be a tolerable English writer.” Yes, that was his way of saying, I am good enough.
Every skill is aligned to a ratio called the 80/20 ratio.
It means 20% of the sub-skill gives 80% of the final product or outcome and your job is to find what those 20% sub-skills are and then try to re-engineer it what you consider to be good enough.
Also Read:- The 80/20 Rule And How It Can Change Your Life
Repeat this process for 30 to 50 hours:-
Well, it should take you around 2 weeks for 3 hours a day to get there.
Challenge yourself and do it for the next 30 days. It’ll change you and the way you think.
If you want to be in the top 20 of what you do then got to make it a priority and dedicate time.
A good reminder system:-
Funny, isn’t it?
Well, the reason why most people fail is that they forget to set reminders and forget that they’re doing this.
Think about it like this how many times you have said to yourself that you’ll stay healthy, and have a healthy meal, and then the next day you forget about it. It happens.
That won’t work and getting good enough is fast and pretty simple but it is not easy and is something that you don’t do it casually.
Also Read:- The Importance of Reminders (And How to Make a Reminder Work)
So, there is one final thing that wanna discuss before I wrap up.
How to exploit “Good Enough”?
The real value of being good enough comes when you stack multiple skills and that’s how you should aim to be good enough at around 3 to 5 skills that work well with each other.
So, it is called the skill stack.
A skill stack has to be unique, the more valuable you become.
It’s just like the habit stack mentioned in the book Atomic Habits, where the author clearly explains about habits getting stacked to create a system.
People get too attached to their job title and they’ll tell you what job they have not what they know how to do well.
In the current world that we are living in if you want to have a plethora of options, you simply can’t expect to know one thing unless you are world-class.
Also, don’t fall into the trap of being a mile wide in an inch deep.
Some people think that it is impossible to be good at multiple skills because that is how our minds have functioned with thoughts of getting good at one thing and because of which we don’t take that leap of learning multiple skills.
Not just that as a child we were asked a question
What do you want to be when you grow up?
Instead, the question should be,
What do you like to be able to do when you grow up?
The brutal truth is it’s not your mom and dad’s world anymore, people who fail to adapt will have a lot to suffer through in the upcoming years.
The golden rule of life is that you can’t stress about things that you can’t control, rather your complete focus should be on the things that are in your hands.
Things that you control, and luckily for you if you open your eyes and ears you’ll find that in the times we are living in, we can do a lot of things that we can control, it’s all about changing perspective before we see it.
Conclusion:-
Don’t aim for perfection as it is something that ties you up and doesn’t let you think from a different perspective.
Keeps your mind stuck to one thing. Perfection is a myth.
Instead, screw it cause being good enough is better.
It’s okay to be good enough as it allows you to grow and nurture.