Don't Like - Fake It Til You Make It

One of the worst aphorisms in modern professional life is “fake til you make it.” The sentiment is nice. It wants to say that you can experiment and make mistakes until you figure things out for yourself—and there’s nothing wrong with that. But “fake it til you make it” also reifies some entrenched and regressive ideas. The biggest one is that it implies that everyone else is simply faking it, too. In many cases, that is undoubtedly true but a house of cards will eventually collapse. Just because you get a job or a title doesn’t mean that you’ll be able to do it, let alone do it well. What’s more is that no one should have to fake something to be successful. Yes, there are leaps people have to take but there’s no reason those leaps can’t be guided by people who know what they’re doing. That brings up the final gripe I have with this annoying phrase, which is that “faking it” is really just “learning” and there is nothing fake about that.