Feel More Confident at Work Right Now
Are we sabotaging ourselves with our problem-solving mentality?
Every day I talk with dedicated and highly effective IT professionals whose worried looks makes you think they just suffered a major demotion.
It hardly seems to fit, given the new systems created and the important problems they have helped solve for their stakeholders.
Yet, instead of a sense of relaxed confidence in their work, most IT pros walk around feeling quite unsure of themselves and the value of their achievements.
Recently, a colleague pointed out to me that IT pros are problem-solvers by nature. And problem-solvers are always looking out for the next problem to be solved.
In some ways, this is hugely useful. It helps us provide effective service to our stakeholders. It energizes us to critique existing systems and look for what could be done better. And as soon as one problem is solved, we quickly move on to looking for the next one to be worked on.
But in that moving on we often don’t take the necessary time to stop, look and appreciate what we have actually accomplished. After all, it was just a problem that needed to be solved. And there are so many more unsolved problems still ahead of us.
This way of being leads us to overlook what has been done, what we have accomplished. It makes it hard for us to remember that we have been effective and should feel strong and confident about our value and contribution.
Don’t let your confidence be shaken by the mountain left to climb. Stop along the way and take a moment to look back and see how far you’ve come.
