How to Learn Competence

Anyone Can Do It in 10 Steps.

We hear a lot about “learned incompetence” these days, usually about men intentionally not knowing how to cook or do laundry. But we women do it too, often calling men for help when something breaks or seems too complicated. So how can we overcome our fear of learning something new? And why should we? After all, if men can’t cook, why are there so many male chefs? And if women can’t learn to fix stuff, why are there women who can?

This is on my mind because I am currently taking a class on Adobe products (Illustrator, Photoshop, and Indesign). I’ve wanted to learn for a long time, but it felt so intimidating and scary. I was once what was known as a “paste-up artist” before computers. I learned how to make mechanicals that could then be sent to the printer to be printed. After I moved up into management, I actually oversaw the conversion to computer design for a staff of 70 people. But I never learned to do it myself. And now I’m noticing my feelings as I tackle something new and hard and big.

I was not naturally competent. I vividly remember my father telling our family that of his three daughters, my cooking was the worst. So how did I end up being the one that hosted most of the family dinners and wrote a cookbook? I decided to learn. Also, I was hungry all the time and wanted to eat. And by the way, my gay dead brother was actually the best cook. But he died, so he could no longer host family dinners.

I remember once, towards the end of my marriage, asking my husband what words came to mind when he thought of me. To be honestly vulnerable with you all, I was hoping for words like loving, creative, beautiful, sexy, and fun. His word for me? Capable.

Capable.

Reader, shortly after that, we divorced. I had to learn to be capable of taking care of a giant house on my own. And he had to learn how to be capable of doing his own cooking, laundry, and house management. We both survived and are, in fact, better off because of it. Although I still host all the family dinners, and he is still invited.

So, I have learned to be competent in a lot of things I wasn’t naturally inclined to learn, and here are some steps to guide you through learning new hard things:

1. Take a deep breath and decide you are going to try something. Don’t panic about it. Deciding to try is essential. Too many people give up before they’ve even started! Even worse, too many people take pride in not wanting to learn new things. (I find this especially true when it comes to new technologies. Or cooking.)

2. Get yourself into a place of focus and observation. What is going on? What resources do you have available and at hand? What is the actual problem, and what is your goal? What are you hungry for?

3. Find help to guide you. Sign up for a class. Read the instructions. Google something. Look up a recipe. Call customer service. Once, my dishwasher simply stopped working. There was no power going to it. First, I checked the circuit breaker. It was working. I wanted to panic. I wanted to cry. I wanted to call for help. Instead, I took a deep breath and looked closely at the inside of the door. There was an 800 number to call. I called it. It took a while to get to a person. She told me to try a “hard reset,” where you turn off the circuit breaker for 15 minutes and then see what happens. If that didn’t work, she told me, then I would have to call a repair person, and “good luck with that.” Reader, it worked! The thrill of success rippled through me for hours. And importantly, the dishes got done.

4. Don’t give up. My Adobe teacher is a fast talker, and I’ll be honest, I’ve struggled to keep up. There are so many buttons! So many commands that are not intuitive! So many mistakes I make! But I now recognize this feeling of thinking I can’t learn it and never will. It’s the negative part of my mind that if I give it free rein, it will cause me to spend my life sitting on my couch scrolling on the socials while eating bad snacks. But I have kept at it. And each week, I’ve gotten a tiny bit more competent.

5. Ask for help. I’ve gotten more competent because I am not trying to figure it out all on my own. Not only have I signed up for a class. But if there are things I can’t figure out, I rewatch the videos, ask her for help, or Google it! It’s amazing just how many things the internet can help us figure out. My daughter Eve can knit the most amazing complicated sweaters, and she learned to do it on YouTube. Once, my microwave door-opening button broke just as I was heating up frozen homemade broth to make something important. Some guy on YouTube with an Indian accent showed me how to open it. It worked! I still had to get a new microwave, but the broth was saved.

6. Accept that mistakes will be made and the world will not end (unless you are working with dangerous materials*). I can’t tell you how many files I have deleted and started over in my Adobe class. How many recipes I’ve tried and failed at. How many things I’ve planted that died or never even grew in the first place. Mistakes happen. Get used to it. The world will not end. But with each failure, you will learn and become more competent.

7. Find joy in your successes, no matter how small. This is what is so great about learning to cook: You can eat your successes! And your failures, too, but they may not taste as good. Every little success builds your house of competence, where you can live with much less anxiety, fear, or hunger. The anxiety is real, my friends. In fact, I think that’s why I am so determined to be competent at things, because I loathe that feeling of anxiety. If you have it, face it. Each step is a tiny success towards less fear. That anxiety is actually your soul pushing you to get over it by taking action.

8. Find your community of helpers and compatriots. Have friends and family that you can call for help when you need it. My son-in-law, Tony Haile, is my go-to for computer stuff. I was having trouble signing in to my school account for my Adobe class, so I called him. He did a screen-sharing session with me and saw that I had spelled my email wrong! It wasn’t a complicated thing, just a small stupid error on my part. Doh! But sometimes, we need other people to help us see things differently. Many people find joy and assistance in craft circles, writer groups, classes, community groups, and online groups. What I love about the internet and social media is that I have so many good and helpful friends whom I have never met in person and probably never will, but we share perspectives, crucial information, and guidance.

9. Know when to call in the experts (and keep a list of them). Now that I’ve been living alone for many, many years, I have a great list of helpers when a job is too much for me: Electricians, plumbers, construction people, and yard helpers, to name a few. To find good people, ask around. Be willing to pay a little more for people you can trust.

10. Always look back and appreciate how far you have come and how much you have learned. Seriously, life is short. But we each have learned a million new things to get to where we are now. You can do it! You are amazing!

Why this post? Why now? My gut is telling me that we will all need to learn how to be a little bit more competent in a lot of things. And finding our confidence, guidance, and helpers now will make the future easier to navigate. It also will lessen our anxiety about the future. We can’t do everything ourselves, nor would we want to. Part of this time is knowing who we want to be and what we want to do. I’ve had multiple people tell me I should get involved politically. But I have been close enough to politics to know that it would destroy me. I’m taking the Adobe class because I know in my deepest soul that I am an artist and would rather spend the third act of my life learning how to turn my learnings and wisdom into art, infographics, and illustrations to share with all of you and whoever else finds them.

Lastly, there is a difference between saying to yourself “I can’t” versus “I won’t.” Here is an example from my life:

When I was in my early 20s and all my family members were still alive, the women were inside making dinner, and the men were outside shooting metal targets in a tree with an air rifle. Guys, you know me by now enough to know that I went outside and said that I wanted to try. I hit every target. With each ping of the bullet hitting a target, I saw my father, brothers, and brothers-in-law get more and more uncomfortable and unhappy about my success. No one congratulated me or was happy for me. I put the gun down and went back into the kitchen, having ruined their fun. Only recently did I learn that my great, great, grandmother, who immigrated from Lithuania and raised my grandmother after her daughter died, was an ACE sniper! I mean, my father was also an Olympic Skeet Shooter, so I have good shooting genes. However, that does not mean I want to own a gun or shoot things. In fact, I absolutely do not. I won’t.

So yeah, I guess I am capable. And competent. But you can be, too.

*If you are working with dangerous materials like electricity, saws, and toxic products, please be extra, EXTRA careful and make sure to seek expert guidance.