"Oh no, you won't be able to do it"

[jack]

There's a bit of my brain that thinks "Oh no, you won't be able to do it". But I've only slowly noticed it almost ALWAYS thinks that. Whenever a project at work "just doesn't work", I think "oh no, it will take forever to figure out". Whenever it relies on something that someone else has done, I think "I won't be able to figure it out and I'll look stupid if I ask". Whenever there's a bug in my code that's not immediately obvious, I think "I've no idea where to start". It thinks phoning someone will be stressful. It thinks every time tread on someone's toe or say something thoughtless, that people are going to hate me for months.

But that's basically never true. Ever.

The optimum amount of time to spend doing things which turn out to have been a mistake is "less than all the time, but more than never". If I just excised that bit of my brain, I'd probably be right more often!

But I always feel, "well, this time it MIGHT be true, and I have to be ready for the fact that It's Irretrievably Screwed Up", I can't just ignore that completely.

Feeding my brain a steady diet of "oh, it turned out to be ok" definitely helped, but it requires noticing the problem in advance, which is difficult -- every time feels like it's different this time.

ETA: And obviously, I just noticed, I take the time to post about the things I'm still frustrated by. All the things I've got massively better at, I just feel guilty I didn't earlier...