Category: Expectations
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Helpful overconfidence vs. hurtful overconfidence
Sometimes, being overconfident can actually be useful. For example, when you behave like someone likes you—even when you’re not sure—you create a self-fulfilling dynamic where they may be more likely to reciprocate your behavior. When you are overconfident about how much influence you have over your attitude, you also choose to deliberately shape it. Here…
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Potential
When you are new, people will see you as unrealized potential. They haven’t seen your work, so they will make decisions based on signals. With the right introductions, or the right work samples, or the right publicity, they may be willing to give you a shot—maybe even to make a bigger bet on you as…
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Three things I learned after placing Creative Doing in a bookstore
Several months ago, I cold called a brick and mortar bookstore and pitched Creative Doing to the manager of a bookstore. To my surprise, the manager placed an order for a few copies right away. Since cold emails have a low success rate, I had thought the odds would be incredibly low for something like…
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Clarity, success, and confidence
What does success mean to you? What values does it reflect? How certain are you that you can accomplish what you set out to do? What reasons and evidence do you have for this certainty? What are you willing to risk if you fail? What can you gain if you fail to accomplish your goal?…
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Three dimensional business cards
I once heard a CEO of a construction company describe his buildings as three dimensional business cards. It was a great way of thinking about work, and emphasizing why it’s important to do a good job on everything. When a prospective client sees the work you did for somebody else, even if they’re not on…
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Procrastination
When you don’t do something you said you would do, you’re hurting your confidence. Procrastination is a great example of that. If you said you were going to work on something for an hour, and then you open up social media for five minutes and an hour goes by, you need to find a new…
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Presenting uncertainty
If somebody is approaching you about a simple question that you know is impossible to answer, you want to respond with a demonstration of your expertise. Let them know the uncertainty is justified; show historical evidence that what they are asking is difficult to predict. Look at the evidence or circumstances and let the person…
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Confidence buffer
A friend once told me about pitching one of the world’s biggest companies. While they didn’t do business together, my friend was saying it was incredible—borderline a miracle—that the sales conversation even went that far. Then he reflected that it was his own responsibility. He said, “We shouldn’t have to be perfect to get it.”…
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Cargo cult confidence
A couple of people from a tribe untouched by civilization are scouting their nearby land. They see a freight airplane landing on a runway. The plane is full of food. They report back to their tribe and instruct them to build a runway for an airplane. They believe once they build a runway, the airplane…
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Be nice and kind to yourself
When you’re being nice, you are being polite with the intention of making someone feel good. You may be withholding your honesty because you don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings. When you’re being kind, you are being honest with the intention of helping someone improve. You will tell someone that there is food in their…