You Earned This, Act Like It

I was running late to work, so I decided to pay for an Uber to be in the building for a meeting that morning. My driver talked about how his day started at 4 and after my ride he was heading to school for classes. We spent much of the ride talking about his decision to drop out of law school to pursue his passion in animation, his amazing partnership with his girlfriend, and some of my challenges with a new large-scale project I was running.

I told him part of my largest apprehension is that this is such a large-scale project and I'm effectively running it — and hopefully will be running it effectively. He gave me the following advice, which is great because although I've heard it before this was the time I needed to hear it:

"You don't have to be afraid — you earned this. Even if you got a bit lucky, you earned it. You might not know what's happening but for the most part just pretend like you do until you do and if someone asks you something that you don't know the answer to reply with 'I'll confirm that for you.'"

I applied it during a meeting that day. It worked like a charm.

Thanks, James.

— Jay