Recently, I learned Angular and completed a task in an Angular Project. It was merged into the Main branch and successfully released into Production. So I should be confident to do a similar task in Angular, right? Unfortunately, I wasn't.
I had a feeling that I'm not good as others think I am. I doubt myself if I'm able to do this. Developers often have this situation and people call this Imposter Syndrome. This happens among developers as the internet says. Every time I intend to try something different, I was renewing my fear. I read more about this and found many ways to get rid of it but, my case was different. There was another factor influencing my fear.
From the beginning, I built my tech stack around C# and related frameworks. I became fluent in ASP.NET Core and created many APIs in the past years. My comfort zone was filled with API development. But in a 10 member team, you have to Juggle multiple balls to cover all projects. So when I was assigned a front-end task on Angular for the first time, I was very excited and afraid at the same time. Learning new things always gives me a push and fortunately, I finished the first task without much hassle. Since I'm good at back-end development, I thought of ASP.NET Core as my hometown and I'll always go back there. When another front-end task was assigned, a couple of thoughts crossed my mind. “What if I couldn't complete the task? What if I'm not able to learn Angular well? I'm arguably fitted in the back-end team. I don't belong here.”. These uncertain thoughts almost pulled me back. But I didn't give much chance for these unwanted thoughts to grow. When I started doing the task, all my fears went away. I was able to finish it better than I expected. Also, I enjoyed learning new things in Angular and I even tried out some of those learnings in my hobby project on the weekend. It wasn't that bad, after all.
Every time I was assigned to do new things, I had this fear inside me. The fear of getting thrown out of my comfort zone and underestimating my capabilities. Later I figured it was not worth my time. I realized nobody is going to push me forward, it has to be me. I have to drive myself and get out of my comfort zone. There exist people who are facing their own fears and couldn't end up where they desired to be. It is okay to have fears in life and maybe we can't get rid of them all of a sudden yet, remember a small step is enough for a good start. Determining not to put pressure while trying new things was the first step I took, and indeed it laid a big ground for every step I took since then.
Top comments (2)
To develop, you always have to leave your comfort zone, which is obvious
Indeed!
To acheive things in life, we have to jump out of our comfort zone.