It’s not Binary.
I want to dispell a myth that people in the technology world have, knowlingly or not, been telling and being told for a long time.
In technology we seem to try to fit people into two buckets all the time. There’s the I can code bucket and the I can’t code bucket, or the I can design bucket and the I can’t design bucket, etc. I think this stems from people’s need to classify themselves and maybe an even deeper need for people to be able to point to one of these groups to which they belong. In other words, this becomes a part of people’s professional (and sometimes personal) identity. And nowhere is this felt more accutely than with Product people (a group to which I belong).
This binary way of thinking is a sneakily disguised version of a fixed mindset.
But I have a problem with that. I think that this binary way of thinking is a sneakily disguised version of a fixed mindset that constantly makes us believe we are at the bottom of this massive hill that we’ll never be able to reach the top of — so why even try?
Think back to when you were first learning how to read. Can you pinpoint the day you woke up after not being able to read the day before and all of a sudden knew how to read? Me either.
That’s because these types of deep learning and understanding — such as reading, coding, or designing — are not nearly as binary as we’d apparently like to think or portray to others.
Instead, take joy in every hard-fought inch of progress you make.
Instead, take joy in every hard-fought inch of progress you make. Every hour spent frustratedly staring at the same line of code or trying to replicate something you saw on Dribbble; All the blood, sweat, tears, and Google searches that went into that little one page app that everyone looks at only long enough to say “oh…cool”; They‘re all major leaps for you — not toward some fixed goal in the distant future, but rather as adventures that now leave you one step beyond where you were yesterday.
So if you’re learning a new skill, great job! Keep it up! But if you’re looking for the day to mark on your calendar as the day you became an “I can code”, you’re setting yourself up for unnecessary disappointment because as somebody smarter than me once said, “The journey is the destination.”
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