My first software engineering internship ever was at Apple.

Truth is, I was visibly nervous on my first day.

If you’re anything like me, images of highly polished technology come to mind. Designers meticulously crafting the aluminum bodies of MacBooks. Developers pouring out lines of code from their fingertips as if they were composing symphonies of software.

I imagined those Apple engineers were true masters of their craft.

Me? Well, I’m not like that at all. At this point in my life, I barely finished my second year of university. How was I supposed to keep up with them?

Before my first day of work, I was already beginning to play this treacherous game of comparison. Setting unreal expectations of what I should be able to achieve. Especially as a beginner.

By my first day, I already felt out of place. Worry started to run through me. I felt like a complete fraud.

I felt like I didn’t belong.

But, on week one, I made it an effort to reach out to everyone on the team. Better understand their mentality.

One conversation stands out above the rest.

The topic of “Imposter Syndrome” surfaced with a mentor, Ben. To my surprise, he said these feelings never go away. Even he went through these motions of “well… I’m supposed to be the expert here, but honestly, I don’t know.” But what stood out to me was his response to the feeling.

His response to uncertainty wasn’t fear or panic.

It’s a deliberate opportunity to challenge themself and learn something new.

One quote from those conversations has stayed etched in my brain:

The following system really puts it on display:

The 70-20-10 Principle

https://twitter.com/SystemSunday/status/1537758208525324292

Ben Meer from System Sunday has coined (TK: source?) the 70-20-10 rule of work:

• 70% of your work will be mediocre.
• 20% will suck.
• 10% will be awesome.

Let’s convert those percentages to absolute numbers to see it in action:

• For 10 units of work → 1 will be awesome, 9 won’t be.
• For 100 units of work → 10 will be awesome, 9 won’t be.
• For 1,000 units of work → 100 will be awesome, 900 won’t be.
• For 10,000 you get the idea.

Statistically speaking, you should expect to fail nine times before guaranteeing your first awesome piece of work.

Why it works

One of the biggest flaws in our thinking is setting our expectations far too high. I’m not a special case, I’m guilty of this too (like my situation as an intern clearly demonstrates).

By definition, I was supposed to know the least on the team.

But in my head, I set the expectation that I should be an expert like those who’ve been engineering at Apple for 10, 11, 12 years.

I suffered from a perfectionist mentality.

Yet, this mental reframe of the 70-20-10 principle lets go of the expectation that our work should be perfect right from the start. Being in university, you only have one chance at an exam. There’s no do-over. There’s no chance to iterate on what you learned. You’re expected to know it all before you step into the exam room.

Failures aren’t included as a part of the learning process. Which is a mistake the education system ironically hasn’t learned from.

Last thoughts

To create exceptional work, you need failures to learn from.

Talk to the so-called “experts” about their failures, not their successes. What you’ll find is for every 1 breakthrough, they had to back out of 9 dead ends.

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Naval @naval It’s not 10,000 hours, it’s 10,000 iterations. 9:18 PM • Nov 21, 2022 2204 Retweets 14601 Likes Read 343 replies

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Talk soon,
Ricky

Ricky Palaguachi

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