Don’t Frame Your Jersey Before You Wear it

Earlier this year I was on a kickball team with some friends and yes, it was awesome. But this isn’t your average grade-school-gym-class-kickball we’re talking about. It was more like fast pitch softball meet’s Ben Stiller-Vince Vaughn-Wrench-Throwing-Dodgeball. It was intense and way more competitive than it should have been. But alas, fun.

So on the night of our first game, not knowing what to expect, we laughed and joked about how many homeruns we’ll kick and fly balls we’ll catch. When my friend Mark, laughing, says, “I should probably just slow down. I’m trying to frame my jersey before I even play.”

We had no idea how to even play the game yet and we were all talking like they were going to put us in the kickball hall-of-fame! Obviously, we it was all in good fun. And in our defense, we were awesome 😉 But it made think about other times when I’ve tried to “frame my jeresey” before I’d even worn it.

When you try to be an expert right out of the gate, you set yourself up for failure. And when you start comparing yourself to what other people are doing that have been in the game longer, your brain goes to one of two responses:

1) I could never be that good.

or

2) I should be that good.

We put ridiculous expectations on ourselves to be great at something when we haven’t even had time to suck at it yet. Whether it’s writing, photography, speaking, or even kickball, at the start you can’t expect to be as good as someone who’s done it before.  You can’t expect to win all the awards, frame all the jerseys, or impress all the people straight out of the gate. It takes time, it takes relationships, and most importantly commitment.

I don’t like to suck at stuff. If I’m bad at something I want to become “not bad” as fast as possible. Luckily, someone else does too… I recommend Josh Kaufman’s book The First 20 Hours. It’s all about rapid skill acquisition by making it past the first 20 hours of committed practice. He’s says…

“…if you can’t make it past the first 20 hours, you are never going to make it to the part where your really, really, good and everybody knows it.”

Also, check out Todd Henry‘s great interview with him on The Accidental Creative Podcast for a quick intro to the idea.

I just want you (and me) to understand that, yes there all people who are better than you. Yes there are masters.
They all had to start. They all had to learn. They all had to push past the suck to get to the greatness.

Give yourself time to be terrible. Don’t place yourself up against someone who’s been doing it for 5,10, 20 years.

Don’t frame your jersey before you wear it.

 Question:

How much time are you willing to allow yourself to learn something new?