This year has been eventful, I spent three months in China, started a new job and moved apartments and the year is not even halfway through.

However, mixing things up is not the same as building momentum. And this is my focus for the remainder of 2021.

Building momentum comes with mixed feelings, doubts and an ebb of flow of motivation.

Questioning your worth

I am now four weeks into my new job and have spent 10-12 hours a day attempting to integrate and begin contributing to the business.

Progress is slow, and my confidence is lower than when I started. I am unsure whether the skills I have can serve the company as they address their highest priorities.

In my previous role, I was conflicted about the demands I was putting on others and unhappy with my COVID work schedule rolling out of bed at 6am replying to urgent texts and emails, then closing my final conference call at 11pm. But I was contributing.

Transferring your skills

Depending on your role, skillset, and personality, it may take time to transfer your talent, develop new relationships and gain respect so that your voice is heard and can facilitate positive change.

Be patient, do not make rash decisions and accept that your confidence will wax and wane.

In this stage, you need to focus on trying small experiments and learning what works for the business and adapting your approach accordingly. It is all about finding your niche as your hone your vision.

This does not mean that you abandon what you think is right for the business. You mold it to your new environment. In the long term, this will be more effective than the cut and paste approach.

Zooming out from the here and now

Starting a new role to gain experience in the green technologies start-up space, was a major focus of mine for the past 12 months.

In any new step we take, it has taken a lot of effort to get to that point. Once achieved, you shouldn’t be surprised that you feel empty. However, emotionally this might take some time to realize.

Therefore, you need to refocus on what will sustain you as you gradually take aim at new goals. For me, I have listed my new goals and plan to review them periodically to assess my progress:

• Understand how a start-up is created and grows.
• Learn new skills that I can use in my own start-up experience.
• Grow within the company and be a respected member of staff.

In working towards these goals and understanding how you can contribute, take heart that your skills, work style and vision will not be a perfect fit. This will give you the opportunity to learn and build new skills.

I am learning to be scrappy again, building applications in Tableau and Python rather than using established software. And with a goal in mind, I find this is the best way for me to become proficient.

As Garry Tan says:

Earn, Learn or Quit

When you are learning, you need to accept that your progress in the company may be slower than originally envisaged. This is the re-calibration I am going through.

It is uncertain, you feel self-conscious, but you need to have faith that you will come through the process providing more value to your company. And in time you will gain the respect of your peers, management, and executives. Your voice will be heard louder and stronger.

Therefore, begin with the approach of observing, learning how things are done and identifying the key gaps in current processes that you can address.

Once done, develop the resilience to work towards those goals, even if others are less than encouraging.

Be grateful, that you are not stuck in a role with parochial objectives which you are progressed checked on regularly.

This may provide clarity in the beginning. However, there is only so much growth before you hit a roadblock where progress is assessed by taking on more of the same and doing it faster and faster.

Therefore, take the doubts, frustrations and questions and learn to manage your negative mindset as you progress and hit the inevitable stumbling blocks.

Managing a negative mindset, does not mean that you are going to eliminate all negative thoughts. Instead, learn to acknowledge them and live with them, until they eventually dissolve.

But how?

First, say less negative sh*t, whether to others or yourself. As the more you repeat them, the larger they become.

That is not to say you should be living in an over-optimistic fantasy land. But be objective in the assessment of the obstacle in front of you and have the faith that a breakthrough will eventually come.

To sustain yourself as you search for the elusive breakthrough, remember your goals. And that is why I am taking a page out of David Goggins’ book and taping my goals to my bathroom mirror to remind myself of them each morning.

This provides the confidence to keep chipping away at those boulders that stand in your way. And with each dent you make the more you will grow, the more others will benefit from your efforts and the closer you will get to your goal . . . and then onto the next challenge.