Re: Fighting Impostor Syndrome
Hi all
>On Fri, Aug 16, 2013 at 10:55 AM, Margarita Manterola wrote:
>
> Any other ideas of what we could do to fight impostor syndrome?
Sometimes it seems that first you need to prepare yourself, and after
that, when you are ready (when?), you step ahead to do X.
But it's not like this: we everybody learn by doing, and in the free
software communities, we have great tools to keep history of things,
revert mistakes, make incremental improvements...
So maybe we should make explicit that *you can start contributing to
Debian just right now* (only essential directions should be enough to
start), reinforce the community review and mentoring, clarify that
*mistakes can be undone* (or lead newbies to the tasks where mistakes
can be undone easily), and yes, provide a list, of "things that will
help you to contribute (even more) effectively", (that you can learn
*meanwhile* you contribute).
In adition to this, dividing tasks in *very small steps* make them
look less scary and provides feeling of 'I'm progressing' even when
you still didn't finish the whole task.
My two cents
Laura Arjona
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