The Curse of Competence
There’s a marvelous notion from systems theory about “feedback loops.” Feedback loops help redirect activities in more meaningful ways. If your arm hurts when you bend it back too far, you stop. The feedback of pain signals you to alter your behavior, and you know to stop. Pain is useful in this case. It’s a valuable and important mechanism for signaling a change in action to prevent injury.
The same can be true about many other activities in life. I got plenty of feedback in grade school gym classes that I was no good at sports. Being the last one picked by my peers whenever we formed teams definitely gave me the impression that catching a ball was not my strong suit. “Varsity speed reading,” my dad said. “That’s your thing, Pambo.”
On the academic front, I was all aces. Doing well in school came easily, and high grades and accolades came as a result of my achievements. The feedback loop was “keep excelling at what you’re good at.” But after a while, I lost track of what I was doing because I was good at it, and what I was doing because I loved it. The external feedback loop had completely trumped the internal one. And being good at a wide range of academics— cursed with competence, so to speak—meant that many options were available to me as a high achiever, and it became murky to sort out which way I ought to go.
Yet it turns out the academic part of me— the one that was lauded and visible to the most people— was just one part of me, and maybe not even the biggest part. The many other facets of me included a soulful spirituality, which I was able to nurture through a vibrant youth group and attending a church of my own choosing, and a huge passion for imagining new possibilities and bringing them to life, which played out mostly in the backyard (dragging home discarded Christmas trees to make a forest, for example) and my bedroom closet (which I turned into a lending library for my younger siblings, complete with rubber-stamped due dates) along with a well-stocked basement (where I had both a sewing machine and woodworking workshop, along with an eight-track recording studio for our makeshift radio program called The Rolling Tomatoes). To me, these pursuits were ordinary child's play. It took me many, many years to understand that this propensity to envision and create was called design, and that there was a collective of people called designers who did it, even as adults. I didn’t have any external validation for these playful activities, and I hadn’t yet become bold enough to tune out the external feedback praising me for my academic achievements. I wasn't yet brave enough to tune in to my heart— to trust that what I loved doing might be exactly the work I was meant to do.
This is why I believe that competence can be a curse. Being good at a wide range of things that the world validates and values can create loud feedback loops which say “keep at it.” It was hard to tune out the external accolades that encouraged my “smartness” and earned me praise and awards followed by workplace promotions and status. It was a challenge to resurface parts of myself that were less known and explored and give them voice and validation.
As I developed the courage to move into new territory with my work and life, it alternately felt liberating/free (like swimming in a warm blue sea with the sun on my face) and terrifying/alone. (There’s no one else out here and I can’t even see the shore!)
When I decided to reclaim my creativity, pursue graduate studies in design, and start calling myself a designer, I really didn't care if I would be good at it— I just wanted to be one. I felt like I had found my people, and simply being part of a group of imaginative creator-doers was enough. I just wanted to be on the team, so to speak, and I no longer cared if I was the last one picked.
I ultimately pushed beyond what I was praised for being good at and leapt into what I loved, and that has made all the difference.
I wrote the first draft of this piece while participating in a workshop at Northwestern University sparked by the book This I Believe, edited by Jay Allison and Dan Gediman, with foreword by Studs Terkel. A small collective of students, faculty and staff came together to explore and write about one thing we believe.