Become an Advanced Beginner

“I’ve never done this before.”

There are ways to be good at starting something you’ve never done before, at being a beginner again, at facing that place of discomfort as an adult.

We’ll look at practice, pretending, abstraction, play, and finally, self-talk.

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They say “fake it till you make it”. There are two parts to this advice: of course there’s the faking part, but first there’s the practice part. When we fake something, we go through the act without knowing the details, the implication, the subtleties, the outcome. We discover all those as we do, as we practice.

Pretending gets a bad rap. To move away from the posturing (imposturing), there’s a trick. Let’s cut the word in its two parts: ‘pre’ and ‘tending’, meaning to ‘tend in advance’. Let’s pretend we’re at the end (in a few months), and pretend we’ve had a success. Describe what it is we’re celebrating: “I’ll have obtained a first success, and then a second success, and then I’ll have started forming a new habit.” Imagining the future and working backwards creates artificial mastery. It’s the difference between thinking we’ll never get past being a beginner, and pre-imagining (knowing) that we’ll move past the beginner stage, and why.

Parts of this new project are special, becaue we’ve done those parts before. We can abstract away those parts into the sub-parts that are familiar. We’ve made a list of tasks before, we’ve planned things before, we’ve researched things before, we’ve made a draft before, we’ve watched a how-to video before. But we’ve also probably done some of the components of this new thing before, if only we would allow ourselves to think a little bit in the abstract. Before long, we’ll be making the connections.

Kids have a lot of experience being a beginner, which is why they play so much. “Let’s try this out, just for fun.” “Let’s try this on, just for fun.” The nature of play is that we need to prioritize the fun parts first, knowing that the rest will follow. It’s practicing, but by removing the serious, effortful parts. Practice for free.

“I’ve never put a course together.” If what you’re building is making you scared, your self-talk will likely look like self-sabotage. The presence of sabotaging self-talk is usually a sign. If you’re a little scared, you have sabotaging self-talk and you’re a little excited about what you’re building, it usually means you have to push through. To determine the next action to take, look for the one creating that kind of self-talk.

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The good news is that most adults don’t take on new projects. If you dare to be the beginner again, then congrats! You’ll be going in a place that few people go.

As a creative there are so many new skills to learn. Plenty of places to push past beginner stage.