Confidence vs Competence
Many people confuse confidence with competence, and I get it these terms are usually easy to confuse, but if we review each word meaning we can define the difference.
According to Cambridge Dictionary
Confidence: the quality of being certain of your abilities or of having trust in people, plans, or the future
Competence: the ability to do something well
At first they sound similar, but they are completely different and this makes me think of the paradox of the egg and the chicken, who came first? The chicken or the egg.
How Confidence and Competence Work Together
In this case they come together, in order to build competence, you need to build the skill and with the skill confidence appears, the more you practice a skill the more confident you become, and eventually you are competent in that specific skill you’re practicing.
My Experience Learning to Cook
I’ve experienced this several times, when I started to do my chef course and learn all the cooking techniques, how to chop and manipulate the knife I felt scared, and of course I didn’t have confidence in me as a cook, but that didn’t stop me. I kept honing my skill and practicing chopping following the guidance of the teacher, on how to hold the knife, how to move it on the chopping board, and after a few months now I’m fully confident I can chop and cook whatever I can because I built the confidence and became competent in cooking and preparing food.
Facing the Same Challenge in Design (XD → Figma)
Recently (a few years ago) I’ve experienced the same situation, I had been working with Adobe XD for almost 5 years every single day, and in my team we decided that XD wasn’t good enough, we were building very complex products, and we even had to break files into different parts, handling a design system in Adobe XD became almost impossible, we decided to shift to Figma, and this changed everything for us.
We had a way of creating products using XD that wasn’t the same with Figma, so the first months we had to give ourselves the opportunity to be beginners again, to learn EVERYTHING. We communicated to the project owners and stakeholders we were making the change in the app and they were patient with us. For my team and me the first two months were stressful and exciting because we were discovering new ways to create prototypes, new tools, new workflows that at the end of the day allowed us to increase speed in the way we were creating prototypes, but at the beginning it was stressful for almost all of us, we no longer felt confident in presenting products, in creating prototypes, everything felt new, but we put the work into it…
The Turning Point With Figma
Once we understood how Figma worked the changes were massive, to be able to have shared libraries and to build the design system, being able to create responsive layouts in no time using auto layout was a game changer, and by then we didn’t have variables or any of the more advanced features Figma has nowadays but it felt like a breeze compared to all the work we had to do using XD to be able to create prototypes and hand them off to the developers. Figma was the right tool, and now after 4 years using Figma every day, I feel confident using it and more important I feel competent using this to create products. Of course there are new challenges every day but this is part of the fun, to be able to conquer new challenges, to figure out a flow or an interaction using variables or anything that we think can improve the workflow.
From Learner to Mentor
Today I mentor designers in Figma, I’m not an expert in everything in Figma, but after 4 years I have enough experience to guide others through the tool. In my team we constantly share new plugins and new features we find interesting, shortcuts (I love shortcuts) are hidden jewels people usually don’t pay attention to but they’re time savers!
It’s funny now looking back in time how insecure I felt when we started using Figma, from a simple button in Figma you use frames for everything! In XD everything is done using shapes… Big mindset change! But in a good way! In my opinion what helped the most was putting the work, allowing us to be beginners again, opening my mind to learn, every hour, every new frame, every new prototype I created helped me to build the confidence that brought the competence.
What I’ve Learned
So to summarize here is what I learned, and keep learning, confidence and competence grow side by side, the more you practice and hone your skills the more confident you feel, and as your confidence grows you become more willing to explore new things opening the path to competence.
Similar to when I started to chop vegetables using a chef knife, I didn’t feel confident. When I started using Figma I felt unsure of how to create a single screen, now after 4 years and thousands of prototypes, two apps and countless features designed in Figma, I feel fully competent to face any challenge presented, and my brain is not worried about how to use a tool but to figure out the solution to solve a challenge successfully.
Final Thought
Don’t let the lack of confidence hold you back, don’t think that because you don’t feel competent in something that means you won’t be able to learn a new skill, focus all your efforts in practicing and honing that new skill, whatever it may be, cooking, ice hockey (story for another blog post), playing the guitar, web design, anything that you want to learn, you’re fully capable of it if you put the work into it, hour by hour, day by day, even if you only have 10 minutes to practice… that’s totally fine, practice is practice no matter the time. You’re learning how to play the guitar, don’t focus on the whole song, focus on mastering a few notes at a time and soon enough you’ll find yourself playing the entire song. Yes that’s the secret: break a big challenge into small parts and you’ll conquer the world.