Confidence Zones

The Goldilocks Zone is the just-right distance from a star 🌞 where a planet can sustain liquid water 💧 - not too hot, not too cold, but ideal conditions for the possibility of life to exist 🌱.

The Goldilocks zone is also one of three "confidence zones" that I use to describe confidence levels, which are ever so important for so many things in your personal and professional lives, including applying for jobs, promotions, prizes, and general promotion of your work. 

The three zones are:

🔵 The unconfident zone, where your levels of confidence are underselling your actual capabilities.

🟢 The "Goldilocks" zone, where confidence is roughly in step with actual ability - a zone where you should, IMHO, spend a significant chunk (but not all) of your time.

🟠 The over-confident zone, which splits further into two:

🟡 The slightly overconfident zone: you've just had a bumper run of successes in a row and are feeling invincible - a very natural breeding ground for a bit of over-confidence.

🔴 The Dunning-Kruger effect: where a high level of confidence in ability is totally out of touch with reality, but unrealized by the individual.

In this Hacking Academia video, I dive into the concept of confidence in a professional career with an academic research lens. I cover:

🧠 The need to deliberately think about and be aware of your levels of confidence.

🙋‍♂️ The very common scenario of people underselling themselves (usually not their fault, but a product of the system we come up in).

🚀 The need to be slightly over-confident on occasion (selectively).

🪞 That getting feedback that you're doing well but are perhaps slightly over-confident, while sometimes a little awkward, is also a signal that you're pitching at just about the right level - you don't want people to miss what you're proposing is your value proposition!

🔁 That confidence is one of those things where you're particularly reliant on the perspective and feedback of others - you can't fully assess whether you're at about the right level yourself.

⚠️ Not covered in the video, but there’s also the situation where someone (unknowingly) has completely misplaced confidence that’s likely to get them into serious trouble. 🤝 There are good, gentle ways to try and help them - supportive conversations, mentoring, or prompting reflection. 🚫 There are also toxic ways to go about it - attacks, shaming, ridicule, or exclusion - that should be avoided at all costs.

So, which zone do spend most of your time hanging out in? I try to spend most of my time in the Goldilocks zone, but occasionally foray into the "over-confident" zone (sometimes deliberately, sometimes unwittingly 😅), and despite my best intentions, occasionally lapse into the "unconfident" zone.

🖥️ YouTube: https://youtu.be/xu18cIonyv4

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