Picture this: two miners are clocking in at the earliest hours of dawn for their 8-hour shift. Both miners are relatively new but have adequate experience working underground. Near the end, the first miner starts to slow down and grows weary yet eager as the end of his shift is coming to an end. The second miner disregards the end of his shift approaching and continues to chip at the rock optimistically, hopeful of finding a gem. As the clock nears 6 pm, the first miner eagerly leaves, while the second continues chipping for another ten minutes. These ten minutes become life-changing, as he eventually finds a stash of diamonds to reward his hard work.
The first miner’s lack of success was due to growing competence. Settling for the bare minimum by working below his potential yielded subpar results he received. On the other hand, the second miner strived for maximum results, thus, receiving the reward of hard work.
Addison Anderson from Vox wrote, “Psychological research suggests that we’re not very good at evaluating ourselves accurately. In fact, we frequently overestimate our own abilities.”
If you wish to strive for greatness, competence is that snake in the grass undermining your chances of reaching that higher level. In this article, you’ll learn five of the most common signs of growing competence.
1. You deny improvement is possible
Competence is the byproduct of an obnoxiously high ego. When you have an ego higher than the United States population on 4/20, you refuse to accept your flaws and weaknesses. Not only does this cause you to lose satisfaction in your daily work, but you begin to tolerate your poor work ethic, thus, undermining the success you wish to achieve.
Like a video game: you would no longer find joy and satisfaction in a video game when you remain stationed at the same level. Amusement from video games comes from leveling up your character, defeating the boss, ranking up in tiers, and becoming an overall better player.
To succeed, you must find every flaw preventing you from achieving your goals and improve on them, whether it be waking up too late, drinking too much coffee, or forgetting to meditate. Doing so will allow you to convert weaknesses into strengths, further propelling you toward emotional, physical, mental, financial, and spiritual success.
2. You’re Becoming More Easily Distracted
Distraction is a sign of low attention span, but it’s also a sign of growing levels of competence due to our inability to enter a state of flow. When we’re competent, we’re more likely to get distracted by our phone notifications, emails, and social media alerts from another tab, then brush it off later as an insignificant issue. Repeating the cycle of getting distracted, and then returning to work reduces the work we’re able to output.
By removing all sources of distractions, we become more immersed in our work, study, or learning, keeping us occupied in surpassing the next milestone. Adopting the consistent habit of doing more than what’s asked or working harder the next time will project us toward greatness.
3. Less Work Completed in Longer Hours of Time
Piggybacking on the previous sign, and completing less work in a longer time frame is another sign of competence. The time not working when we’ve scheduled ourselves to is considered a wasted time and indicates the seed of laziness beginning to sprout. As a result, this seed infects our productivity as we start to cut corners, believe the insufficient work we’ve produced is sufficient, and compensate for our lack of success with self-pity.
Doing the bare minimum will take you somewhere, but doing more than what’s asked will get you even further; it’s how Kobe Bryant became one of the greatest NBA players of all time. Rather than complete the bare minimum at practice, Kobe became dominant at the game by spending extra hours in the gym working on his strength, mobility, and ball skills. You won’t always have a friend or mentor to keep you accountable; therefore, you must be your accountability partner to reduce competence and keep you hungry for more.
4. Expecting to Yield Immediate Results
Someone expecting immediate results has a lower chance of succeeding than one who’s patient, diligent, and prioritizes the habits to improve by 1% each day. Additionally, you will lose passion and discipline to reach your goal if your main focus is to seek instant results and quit afterward. A person strictly motivated by instant results indicates they’re repugnant of hard work and are attracted to quick high-risk schemes. On the other hand, a person’s discipline in their daily work routine will continue to work hard, even after passing their original benchmark.
Although it’s not always easy, shifting our minds to focus more on our daily routine instead of instant results sets us up for higher rewards in the future. The journey of a goal is more valuable than the results, which adds the flavor of fulfillment to our lives. An 80-year-old farmer striving to grow his acres of produce will live a more fulfilling life than a retired 80-year-old farmer who sits on the couch and watches TV all day. Eliminating competence strengthens our growth mindset, allowing us to succeed in our purpose and strive for greater heights.
5. Not Capitalizing on Learning/Growth Opportunities
Declining the learning or growth opportunities in front of us is a dead giveaway of growing competence. Instead of using the learning opportunities in front of you to grow more skillful in your field, staying put like a snail in the middle of the road inhibits your ability to level up; it will get you in the opposite direction.
Adopting new skills, whether learning an instrument, learning how to code, or speaking a different language, allows you to expand your capabilities. With more skills, you become a Swiss army knife; you can do so much that growth and further development become endless.
As toddlers, we all learned how to walk through parental supervision and personal trials and errors. Learning how to walk enabled us to travel from point A to point B. Walking then taught us how to run, ride a bike, and drive a car. The point is this: By learning one skill, we build a bridge to teach us an abundant number of other different skills.
“I can’t say it enough that learning how to learn is one of the greatest skills anyone can have. It’s why I advocate that everyone go to college.”
– Mark Cuban
