The Competence Conundrum
A hidden curse within being capable, resourceful, and trustworthy.
This is the deep end, and it's the one day of my newsletter regimen that is purely philosophical and not design related. Enjoy.
When you’re competent and diligent, you can do almost anything. So people will ask you to do... almost everything, and you’ll end up better at it than most of them, even at the stuff you absolutely dread.
My church in Clairemont needed someone to help with treasury duties. That meant counting tithes and offerings, cash and checks, and making sure it was all logged in a system for the donors to receive a tax deduction statement when needed.
I hate accounting. But I was better at it than most, so I raised my hand.
I did it every Sunday for almost a year, and it was a grind. Not because I was bad at it. Quite the opposite. I was ruthlessly efficient, which is its own kind of trap (nobody rescues the guy who’s crushing it).
The same thing happened with photography.
When I graduated college, the requests rolled in from friends and family: home listings, graduation photos, baby pictures, portraits, engagement shoots. I didn’t like any of it, but I was good at it, and apparently that’s all it takes to get booked.
All I wanted was to take pictures for fun, of things that didn’t care how they looked. I didn’t want to shoot people (haha, not that kind of shoot!) who needed me to “just photoshop out” the double chin, the blemish, or the random dude wandering through the background of their engagement photo.
And yes, it followed me to Conversion Factory too.
I loathe project management. Keeping clients moving, creating roadmaps, and making sure the work gets delivered is the part of the job I was eager to hand off... but I’m good at it. I built the automation system that lets us run 10+ clients at a time without losing our minds, and I was the best on our team at doing it (until we hired Marelize, our PM, who is a Godsend).
It has never once put me in flow state. Project management was a spider in the bathtub. I would squash it coldly, remorselessly, with zero passion, and get back to what I was doing.
Here’s the crazy part:
Being good at something is a terrible signal for whether you should be doing it.
If you’re capable and responsible, you’ll get asked to do a lot, and you can’t do all of it. Every task you take on pulls you a little further from your core, one reasonable favor at a time, until you’re trapped inside a job that’s technically a success no matter how much of your soul it eats.
The things I actually love are writing, thinking, and bringing new life and vigor to brands that deserve it. Sounds like nothing at all related to the above, does it?
Every “yes” is a “no.”
Say yes to enough of the wrong things and you’ll wake up really, really good at a whole lot of stuff you don’t love because you would have said "no" to the things you actually wanted.
This is a lesson it took me years to learn, that I still struggle with, and I know there are plenty of talented people out there who need to work on it too.
Stop waiting for the good stuff.
You can have it now if you quit volunteering your time to tasks that are completely, diametrically opposed to your destination, even if they help someone else. Because I guarantee that if you are someone responsible and competent, the goal you have will bring a benefit to the world and you deserve to see it manifest.
— Zach
