Mistakes I made when starting at work

My family has recently had a string of conversations on the topic of "what work is like" vs. "what other people say work is like". So I figured I might as well share some of my insights more widely since we've been talking about them. Given my siblings are much younger, we talk a lot about their university and coming-of-age experiences. Nowadays, it's really easy to believe that everyone has their shit together in real life, thanks to social media. But in reality, we all learn our lessons the hard way. However, this fact is not obvious at all if you came of age in an era of glossy self-promotion, where no one ever makes career-limiting mistakes and wins all the time. My view is that I'd much rather make mistakes and learn than try very hard not to make any mistakes. I like to think that learning from my mistakes significantly changed the kind of person I am. Hopefully for the better, but they're always new things that can go wrong and lessons to learn. Anyway, here are the big mistakes I made in my early 20s, when I was roughly their age. ## I took criticism personally I used to be too insecure and attached to my work and saw it as a part of my identity. I used to translate "this is bad (work)" to "you are bad," which generated a lot of anxiety about my self-worth. I vividly remember the one-on-one where a manager told me (with what we'd now call radical candor), *"You can't learn from criticism."* It stung, but it came from someone I cared for, trusted and respected, and knew cared for me. It horrified me that other people must have seen it too but had no reason to tell me - either because they didn't care or because it benefitted them. It took a long time to unpack where this came from, and the root cause will surprise no one who's ever had a therapy session. I wanted to make my parents proud to give back to them. My distorted reasoning went, if the work is not good, then I'm not good and will disappoint my family, who worked hard to ensure I had a good education, and everything I needed to achieve it. The irony of it all? I never bothered to ask them what they thought of my work or achievements and worked tirelessly towards an imaginary goal. My lesson was: be humble about what you don't know and open-minded about what you need to know. When people criticize your work, consider whether you respect their opinions and understand their position. If you do, you should thank them for taking the time to help you improve. Then, when faced with unexpected criticism, ask for a follow-up meeting to get a more specific answer:\_ "Where did I go wrong? What did you have in mind?\_ Be prepared to hear the answer, and grow from it. ## I didn't have good boundaries between work and personal life At one point, work and personal life blurred to the point where I was overworked, exhausted, and had some minor and annoying recurring health issues. At the time, I was in a company whose livelihood was on the line. There were many issues that predated my hiring, and everyone was all hands on deck trying to fix things. My managers also worked long and irregular hours, so it was easy to justify the amount of time spent at work when everyone else above was doing it. There's no sugar coating this one: things didn't change because of me. I was forced to change when the company went through a reduction in force and sent a big part of us home with a severance package. At first, everything felt pretty terrible. But at the same time, it felt great not to have to care about all the mundane things that kept me up at night just days before. The layoff lifted a huge weight off my shoulders, and I started to think more about when and why I'd let work creep into my life. The harsh truth I needed to face was that work will bleed into your personal life when you don't love and value yourself enough. Slowly, I started to take my commitments outside of work seriously and keep myself accountable for them. That way, I could transition from one environment to another and use the physical and mental boundaries to leave concerns behind. I also introduced more order and structure at work. Nowadays, I set and communicate my intentions for the day, share what I've done with relevant parties, and make few exceptions for artificial fires that others want to drag me into (e.g., just because I'm online and available). Feeling good about my daily accomplishments makes it much easier to disconnect from work when the time comes and focus on the rest of my life. Lastly, and just as important, after talking to many other people who had the same experience, I became much better at identifying what a '[sinking ship](https://www.quora.com/Business/What-are-telltale-signs-that-youre-working-at-a-sinking-ship-company)' company looks like. There are plenty of signs you can be on the lookout for, both outside and inside. ## I thought conflict was bad and avoided it One day, my manager pulled me aside and told me that avoiding conflict means I don't get things done fast enough. So my approach was usually to reach a consensus or compromise first and avoid heated debates or arguments between parties, which amounted to avoidance. Before moving to the United States, I'd never really experienced workplace conflict in any cultures I'd lived and worked in. People had disagreements, but no one was rigid and unreasonable. On the one hand, while growing up, I'd internalized that it's preferable to avoid conflict. My family urged me to be tactful and diplomatic or pick my battles and excuse myself if conflicts escalated to the point where they made me uncomfortable (e.g., verbal abuse or personal attacks). That helped in some scenarios but wasn't enough for work. On the other hand, I had heard many horror stories and feared that being the source of conflict would make me "difficult ."Most women know that's synonymous with a 5-letter word that starts with b and can damage your reputation in a very real way if the word gets around. A turning point was when I realized that part of me didn't want to avoid conflict. I'd been part of some debate clubs as a teenager and enjoyed the experience and thinking on my feet. I wanted to be bolder, but I'd never exercised the assertiveness and debate muscles properly in the workplace. What I was truly afraid of were long, protracted arguments that would slow work down to a halt and people arguing in bad faith. Once I figured this out, everything else was fair game. My takeaway was that conflict and friction are inevitable, and being good at them comes with practice. However, constant arguments and an abusive workplace aren't normal. If work becomes a source of chronic stress, it's a sign that something is fundamentally flawed in the culture or dynamic — either due to a person arguing in bad faith or the circumstance (e.g., lack of information, misaligned incentives, etc). Getting to the root cause is essential. I'd love to say I shared these mistakes so others can avoid them, but let's face: we all need to make our own mistakes. Hopefully the lesson you take away is to not let mistakes define you, but use them as opportunities to grow.