People who suck at things tell you how awesome they are. People who are awesome at things tell you about the disasters they went through to get their skills.
I’ve noticed this pattern:
People who suck at things tell you how awesome they are.
People who are awesome at things tell you about the disasters they went through to get their skills. And those stories are usually funny, though you can feel the pain they must have felt when they happened.
I think it happens more among geeky types, which I know a lot of and am one, but I see it a lot. People like to show off, at least until they realize the challenges they need to overcome to master something. People who mastered something seem more humble, maybe from the pain of the disasters they went through.
It’s one of the ways I figure out how good at something someone is. It also reinforces the importance of experience in developing skills and that “experience” is mostly a nice word for “lived through many disasters and kept going.”
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