Gaining Years of Experience in a Few Months

This is a followup to what I wrote about how someone can have 5 times 1 year of experience instead of 5 years of experience. Note that some concepts and ideas will overlap as this is just a different way to look at the same question of career growth and pace of learning.

I wanted to add that the opposite is also true: there are just some moments in time where you learn so much more than others. In some cases it might feel like you gained years of experience in just of a few months of intense, boundary pushing work.

I think this is different from “getting out of your comfort zone” because it is not sustainable and really goes beyond your capabilities at a given time. The risk of failure is bigger, the gap between what needs to be done and what you have done before is wider.

My Personal Experience

One situation where it happened to me was when Drivy was acquired by Getaround.

At that point, I was VP of Engineering at Drivy and therefore had quite a lot to do in the process. Getting to an acquisition and following up with a successful integration meant being able to figure out complex problems ranging from engineering, architecture, communication, management, business, product, data, design and more… and do this under significant pressure and tight deadlines.

To be honest, the whole process felt the final exam after my then 6 years spent at the company. To get the expected results I really had to leverage all my skills and energy.

It was very intense, but it was also one of the biggest learning experience in my career. It truly felt like gaining years of experience in just a few months. I don’t know if this was true, but that was my perception at the time, and thinking back it’s true that I accomplished much more during that time than I would usually be able to do.

I wouldn’t do it every year, because I would probably collapse from exhaustion, but I’m grateful to have been able to contribute to such a project.

Zones

You might already know about the “flow zone”, where you work between your comfort zone and what would just cause you anxiety. Maybe you also saw diagrams about going from the “comfort zone” to the “learning zone”, requiring you to go through a “fear” zone.

I like this concept of working from different zones, or having different phases in your work… so here’s my attempt at something similar to illustrate my point.

Visualising the various zones

In this situation, we’ll increase the level of complexity and intensity and see that it takes us to different “zones”. The goal is not to get to burnout, but instead navigate through zones depending on what you want to achieve.

• Staying in the comfort zone means doing 5 times 1 year of experience. It’s safe, but you are taking a long term risk of becoming less relevant and end up reducing your options.
• The learning zone is pretty much where 1 year of experience is just that. You are challenging yourself, but in a normal and sustainable way. This is most likely where you want to be for most of your career. Going there might require a bit of energy, but most position will give you the opportunity to do so and most people are able to handle it.
• The fast growth zone is where you seemingly gain multiple years of experience in one year. It is not sustainable for most people, and not everyone is given the opportunity to get there.
• The burnout zone is what happens if you stay in the fast growth zone for too long. How long is too long will depend on your personality, skills, health, context at home and so on.

Cycling through zones

I don’t think most people could remain in “fast growth”, always being at their limit, spending a lot of time and energy in order to get the maximum out of their time. However there are many viable ways to move through the zones, here are a few I’ve seen work:

• Learning <-> Growth: Always keep learning, but sometimes invest even more or leverage an opportunity. This makes it challenging but sustainable.
• Learning -> Growth -> Comfort -> back to Learning: Using your comfort zone to regain energy after a growth period is a valid and sometimes necessary strategy.
• Comfort <-> Learning: I think that it’s fine to stay in your comfort zone for a while. Maybe you have other personal things to handle, maybe you just need to rest! However I wouldn’t recommend remaining in the comfort zone for too long to avoid being stuck after a few years, so spending some energy to get to that next step is important.

Summing Up

My takeaway is that, when you get the chance to be faced with an opportunity that could get you in the “fast growth” zone, it’s very important to focus and make the most of it. Projects that can challenge you this much do not always appear, so when they do and you are in the right place to handle them it’s a great opportunity.

I’ll just add the caveat to be mindful of your health. These situations where you really stretch yourself to get to a goal can be exhausting, both physically and mentally. While it might be a great way to improve, all this benefit is pointless if you burn yourself out.