Laurie has a tough time saying no, and she ends up trying a lot of different things, but this isn't necessarily a bad thing. Attempting to learn something new gives you the fresh perspective of a beginner starting from nothing. We get comfortable and take for granted the pieces of knowledge we have on our skills.

You have to find a balance, though. It's demotivating to feel dumb all of the time. You need to use the thing you learned for some time, so you advance beyond the beginner phase of the skill. If you jump from skill to skill too fast, you'll feel like you're going nowhere. Try to figure out everything that is contributing to your success that you don't have any experience in, and these are the areas where you'll probably want to dig deeper.

Homework

• Try to do something outside of your comfort zone, and use that experience to help you learn how to empathize with those who are unfamiliar with the things that you already know.

Resources

• Kent C. Dodds - How to get experience as a software engineer

Guest: Laurie Barth

• Twitter: @laurieontech
• GitHub: @laurieontech
• Website: laurieontech.com

Host: Kent C. Dodds

• Website: kentcdodds.com
• Twitter: @kentcdodds
• GitHub: @kentcdodds
• YouTube: Kent C. Dodds
• Epic React: epicreact.dev