I took this picture trying to imitate people who use multi-effects superposition on Instagram
I should probably not write this post. This will show me as a complete hypocritical guy.
I saw a stupid t-shirt in a souvenir shop in Montreal the other day. The kind of t-shirt that turns a brand or logo into something else. This one displayed “Just Fake It” with a fake Nike logo.
I won’t talk about the T-shirt. I don’t think it was particularly well made anyway. But that ignited this idea that I am often faking things.
I am not really a good software developer, I thought I was when in fact I was just pretending. And I have a degree to justify it. I don’t create things, instead I steal ideas from other people, I paste them together, I think a little about how I can improve the whole coherence of all these parts and voilà, here is your supa-dupa-software.
I do the same thing with what I write and talk about. Perhaps unconsciously, but I do think I simply recycle ideas, mash them up together.
I also fake my asanas at yoga.When I think I can’t do them correctly I fake them. It works pretty good.
Sometimes I cook. I don’t really like cooking, that’s why I don’t cook often, but apparently I am a good at it. So I pretend to know what I am doing - add a little spices… oh yeah we are going to put some lemon juice on it… and here it is! the famous pork and onions and apples à la Manuel. People seem to enjoy it.
I know how to repair computers. This is a useful skill if you want to win friends. You can also fake this skill, it is easy: just restart the computer (it solves 99% of problems – if it does not, re install everything). I got paid for mostly restarting computers from 9 to 5 for several years (this gave me time to think about how I could program AI softwares by cheating too).
And also I fake my English writing. It takes me days to write a post because I spend half of my time finding words on thesaurus.com.
I can give you many more examples of what I fake but I think you get it.
So until now you must think that I am just cheating and that’s not fair. I think this is fair. This is the best way. Most people are (1) not ok with cheating or (2) unconsciously cheating anyway.
If you go by following the rules you don’t really get anywhere. For example, I don’t know any software programmer who goes by the rules when creating a software, it’s true. We spent countless hours to learn the V cycle and other computer engineers stuff, but we don’t use them. We are living in a time when we can download information and knowledge almost instantly. You can become a software engineer in a week… really. Just fake it. The old way involved a long time for learning, prepare before executing. Now we execute and fix as we go.
This is why we fake our actions. We kind of know what to do, and just go. There is always a way to perfect later. Anyway, how can you improve if you don’t dive in? Faking is the new learning. When you think that you can’t do it, I say just fake it. This is the best way to go past the block.
In the end faking is my friend. It is just telling me “you see, you can do it“.
When I program with bits and pieces from everywhere I just get to the point instead of reinventing the wheel.
And who does not base her/his ideas on what has been said before?
I would never even try any ‘complicated’ asana if I was just thinking I could not doing them good. Faking them get me to perform them.
I would never cook if I did not have fun playing the chef.
I repair computers (even when it involves more than restarting) because I take a risk when most users panic and think they will lose “everything”.
And Thesaurus helped me getting better in English. I learn new words every day.
And finally and this is the most important, I noticed that pretending to be awesome gets me to really feel and act with awesomeness. So I am asking myself if all this faking is not just about getting self-confident and push things forward.
What do you think? Do you fake? Do you pretend? Do you imitate?
I say it’s better to faking it than not doing it.
