Competence

I was reading yesterday a book from an entrepreneur, where he said (about one of his first jobs) that he was enjoyinng because he was good at it.
And I couldn't stop thinking how true this is.

You enjoy doing something when you are competent at it. It's good to be and feel competent at something. It's good to have people asking for your help and advice or admiring what you are doing.
It's good to feel that you are doing a really good job.

Obviously there are passions as well, things that you get easily engrossed in and as you do them, time just flies without you noticing. These are the things that you should be doing to be on purpose!

But it is also great to do things you are competent at.

The learning for me is that it is absolutely normal that when you start a new job, the 1st months will be difficult. Because you will be dealing with people that are doing it for years and are much more confortable. Because you are in a learning curve, and are not competent yet. Because people expect a lot and it will be difficult in the beggining to meet and even more so to surpass expectations.
But that is normal.
When changing a job, it is important to plan:
- what you want to achieve on the 1st 90 days; detailed plan of what to do, who to go out with, what things to understand, who to meet
- where you will be (what level of knowledge do you want to have); what things you expect to have achieved by then

It's important to do this plan to put things in perspective.
It's also probably a great idea to share it with your boss, to set his expectations as well.
But most of all, it's important to you, in order to limit the pressure you put in yourself!