Realizing You Suck And Doing Something About It – Micah

(Posted as a comment here.)

The corollary to “surround yourself with those that are better than you” is “if you’re the best at what you do in your circle, expand your circle.”

When you’re the best, you stop improving. I found this back when I did web/print design. 6 or so years ago I worked at a print firm and I was the best at web design (because no one else did it). What I produced was simply accepted at face value, and I was never really pushed to get better. But when I began connecting with others online who were in the web design field and who were orders of magnitude greater than me, I started getting better.

It’s along the same lines as that saying “the more you know, the more you realize how much you don’t know.”

Whenever I start to think I’m good at something, I reach a plateau. It’s then time to expand my circle – which could mean finding more people in a field, or expanding to a different field – and start sucking again.

Bill Erickson is a WordPress Consultant who builds custom websites using WordPress as a CMS and Thesis as a framework. He’s a cofounder and resident of The Creative Space, and a cofounder of the BIL Conference (the open analog to the TED Conference).