Going to sleep. Every night we lie down, close our eyes and fake sleeping until we actually make it and fall asleep for real.
I used to tell my kids “just pretend you are sleeping, I don’t know if you are sleeping or not and don’t care as long as you are lying in bed with your eyes closed.” They felt they were tricking me and then always ended up asleep.
I never knew that was a thing!
You’re right but I’m not happy about it.
Life in general. I was nearly 40 when I realized three important things; I have the word ‘senior’ in my job title, other people look to me for direction, no one steering this ship really knew to begin with.
Much like how one day you will pick up your kid for the last time and not realize it, eventually you look around and notice you and your peers are in charge (for better or worse).
Mostly in times of economic growth and very positive sentiment. It’s the antidote to the catch-22 that you can’t get a particular job without the experience but can’t get the experience without the job.
Simply put ‘fake it until’ applies when you can put experience you don’t (quite) have on a CV; get the job and acquire the experience before it is ever tested in any meaningful way. That only really happens in a period of rapid economic expansion (whether that be in your (their) business, sector, or country wide). In such cases no-one really knows what they’re doing.
I don’t have much experience of celeb or influencer culture FITYMI - finding someones parked Lamborghini or private plane and dancing in front of it for a TikTok pretending that is yours.
E V E R Y T H I N G
You know when you’re nervous about something, and people say “just be confident!” ? Thats when you gotta fake it til you make it
Fake the confidence, do not fake the preparation.
Oh, now someone tells me
Prepa-what now?
My career. I made it.
Edit for context: I never finished school, and as such I have no formal education in what I do. But I’ve always enjoyed tinkering with servers and networks. This coincidentally became highly relevant in this (seemingly very unrelated) job I had a couple of eons ago. After I quit I exaggerated that detail and used it to pretend I was a professional in my field on future job applications, and that worked out well… until one day I suddenly realized that I’m actually a professional in my field.
Today I can say that I’m good at what I do… but it’s (Mostly) a result of winging it and learning as I go.
Seems to me you only faked yourself and were professional all along
Yeah my degree is completely unrelated to what I do now. Once that first job lets you get your foot in the door the academic credentials are typically far less relevant than work experience
Elon Musk sued the founders of Tesla for the right to be called a “Founder” of Tesla. Then he fired the founders and pretends that he’s the one who innovated everything.
Elon Musk goes on for the next 10+ years to become the richest man in the world with over $100 Billion net worth. As it turns out, faking it works. Well… until you need to design a new car and the best Elon can do is make a Cybertruck.
Literally anything that isn’t life or death. You can learn it as you go.
I fake my own death all the time Never really tried faking I’m alive though, gotta finally try - time is running out
It’s worth a shot
Anything. Something it is good => build confident, make people make a first step on learning.
Something it is bad => scam … until someone believe you.
Any sales job, most programming jobs, and clean laundry
Acting like it wasn’t a shart.
Art
Certainly not piloting, bridge building, or surgery.
I mean, you totally can fake it to make it with those jobs. It’ll just end poorly for you.
Confidence.
If you have a perfectly normal (non-pathological) lack of confidence then pretending to be confident may allegedly help you. A cynic could remark that that requires knowing what that looks like and being able to pull it off, while almost nobody offering that particular “advice” seems to feel a huge need to elaborate on it.
It’s a cliché.
