An Experiment in Scotch

When I was in high school, I played soc­cer. I wasn’t overly tal­ented but I was still good because I worked hard, played smart and refused to be out­worked by any­one. I was the best defender on our team and one of the best in dis­trict because of all that. When I went to col­lege, I wasn’t the best any­more. In fact, I was the worst. I was play­ing out of posi­tion (we had sev­eral good defend­ers so I got moved to mid­field, a posi­tion that didn’t play to my strengths and exposed all of my weak­nesses), I was on a team where I knew exactly no one and I was out of my ele­ment, i.e. my com­fort zone.

All of that should have added up to won­der­ful poten­tial because I had no way to go but up. By no longer being the best on the team, I had the chance to learn from all the peo­ple who were bet­ter than I was. Instead, I stopped work­ing hard and mostly rode the pine all year. I quit in the spring because I couldn’t han­dle the chal­lenge. To this day, it’s one of my biggest regrets.

What does this have to do with Slash and Guns & Roses? In his book My Job Went To India, Chad Fowler writes about how you should always want to be the worst per­son in the band if you’re seri­ous about improv­ing your skills at any­thing. You have to be able to accept chal­lenges and accept the fact that you may fail or else, you’ll always be the same. Being Slash has plenty of perks but most of that has to do with loose women and the best blow and noth­ing to do with becom­ing a bet­ter gui­tar player. By con­stantly mak­ing sure that you’re a tiny lit­tle turd in a really big bowl, your skills will improve to the level of your abil­ity instead of the level of your com­fort. It’s a crit­i­cal dis­tinc­tion that’s com­mon in any­one suc­cess­ful. Sur­round­ing your­self with peo­ple who are bet­ter than you are forces you to learn from them and strive to become better.

Of course this blog is all about me so I must have a point, right? (That doesn’t nec­es­sar­ily fol­low from any of your other posts. Ed. OK, well today it does!) I recently wrote about my inter­nal strug­gles con­sid­er­ing a job I was inter­view­ing for. Assum­ing I took that job, I’d be a big turd in a really, really lit­tle bed pan. My abil­ity to learn would be lim­ited to what I could teach myself. This is not the way to become better.

I’ve been in talks with another com­pany as well and for most of the time, I’ve thought it was a bad fit. That all changed Fri­day with a dis­cus­sion I had with the CEO that went really well. In that dis­cus­sion, it became clear that I would be a tiny lit­tle min­now in the prover­bial pond at that com­pany. That is exactly what I need. (Besides that, the com­pany sounds great to work at.) The times I learned the most at my last job was when I was work­ing with peo­ple smarter and more expe­ri­enced than I was. It was a fun and chal­leng­ing time.

I can’t con­tinue to be Slash if I ever want to find out what the lim­its of my abil­i­ties are. I know I’m good at what I do but I’m no rock star. The only way to get there is to learn from the best. I’m hop­ing I get the chance to do that with this new job.