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The Unforeseen Benefit of Not Having a Clue About What You Are Doing

Being a beginner has benefits you’ve probably never thought of

Ellen Goodwin
5 min readSep 2, 2022

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How often do you put off trying to learn something new because you know you will not be good at it?

Yeah, me too.

There are a whole bunch of new skills and experiences I’d like to try. Are these things that will help my work? No. Because the entire idea of learning another piece of software or mastering an app’s intricacies doesn’t fire my soul.

But I’m all in for learning something that might enhance my life in a non-work-related way.

But not so all in that I’m ready to jump in immediately because I don’t want to be the person who can’t master a simple throw in a juggling class.

I don’t want to be the one the teacher singles out to stand up and share my kindergarten-level still-life drawing with the class. And I‘m fairly certain, if I sign up for a surfing class, I will be the person snorting salt water up my nose as I fall into the ocean with all the grace of a Wild World of Sports failure.

Obviously, while I want to learn something new, I’m putting it off because there is an almost 100% chance that I will be terrible at it, at least in the beginning.

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Ellen Goodwin

Productivity Consultant, TEDx Speaker, Podcast Co-host, Author of DONE: How To Work When No One Is Watching. Learn more at Ellen@EllenGoodwin.com