Maintaining Inexperience
Patterns are comforting. We learn to cope with the world through patterns. Routines become mental short cuts so every time we go to chew some sandwich or tie our shoes we don’t have to rethink the problem. There is something deeply natural about learning and repeating a solution. And some work environments have become expert at learning and repeating unoriginal, decontextualized solutions called precedent (“This is the way it’s always been done…). But in an economy that favors problem solving over physical labor, developing a routine can become detrimental. Routines are creative inhibitors that keep us from seeing problems with fresh eyes.
You can fight the inclination to learn and repeat but there is a useful workaround — keep yourself inexperienced. Be the new guy/gal as much as possible. Look for opportunities to do a job you’ve never done before. And know when it’s time to move on (probably around the time you hit [x] on the above chart) — recognize when you are repeating yourself, when you’ve become an ‘expert’ on auto-pilot. It will be uncomfortable to tear the ground out from under yourself just as you were getting a firm footing. And it will take a whole new skill set to convince others that your past experience will translate to a new problem. But keeping yourself inexperienced is a skill worth learning and repeating.
