ABSTRACT
The dark side of this drive of ours is that we want so much to be good, and we see being good at things as such a valuable accomplishment and so central to our adult identity, that it really upsets us to be not-good. Most of us, as adults, deeply dislike and strongly resist the novice state, that clumsy, helpless feeling of not understanding and not being able to do something. To make this more personal, think of the last time you were in this situation. Perhaps someone was showing you a complex process at work that was new to you and that you needed to use in your job. Or maybe you had to learn a program (like our friend Ron, the librarian) to do a task you’d always done manually. Perhaps your boss said to you, “We have to find new ways to market our product. I know you haven’t worked on this before, but I’m assigning it to you . . .” If you reflect on how you felt as you were trying to learn the new skill: making mistakes, having to do things over, not getting why something wasn’t working and not even knowing what to ask to get clear-I suspect you felt some combination of embarrassment, frustration, boredom, anxiety, and impatience. It’s the uncomfortable emotional soup most of us find ourselves in when we’re required to acquire a new skill.
