A beginner on purpose

A few days ago I was thinking about Anthony Bourdain. Not the food, or not only the food. The way he walked into a stranger’s kitchen anywhere in the world and behaved like a guest. He rarely arrived as the expert. He sat down, ate what they were eating, asked questions and listened. That curiosity is why people opened up to him, and why his shows felt honest.

It made me think about the years when I did the opposite.

Getting ahead too early

I started working young, in Cairo, and I moved up fast. Faster than most people my age. More responsibility, better titles, the kind of trust people usually wait years for.

The problem wasn’t the promotions. It was what I quietly decided they meant. When people treat you like you’re ahead, you start believing you are. I got comfortable. I learned less, and more slowly, than I did at the start, because somewhere in my head the learning part was done.

Barcelona

Then I moved to Barcelona.

Within a few months I understood how big the world actually is. A city full of designers, filmmakers, strategists and studios, many of them better than me, most of them hungrier. The market was crowded and nobody there knew or cared about my titles. I wasn’t ahead of anyone. I wasn’t even half a percent of what I thought I was.

The first months were hard, and not only because of the work. I was hard on myself. I measured every small struggle against the person I thought I’d been in Cairo, and I kept losing.

Choosing not to know

What changed wasn’t the city. It was how I looked at it. At some point I stopped asking “why am I not there yet?” and started asking “what don’t I know yet, and who can show me?”

That’s the part that brings me back to Bourdain. When you travel properly, you’re a beginner all day. You don’t know the language, the streets, the food, or the way people talk to each other. You can fight that, or you can enjoy it. Barcelona taught me to enjoy it. Meeting people who worked differently, watching how they lived and how they built their work, made me curious again in a way I hadn’t been for years.

So I started acting like I didn’t know, even when I thought I did. Asking the question on a brief that felt too basic to ask. Learning new tools from zero instead of forcing the old way. Watching how other people work before deciding how I would do it.

You can’t learn from someone once you’ve decided you already know more than them.

Lighter, not smaller

Being humbled sounds like it should feel bad. For me it did the opposite.

When I thought I was ahead, every mistake was a threat to that picture, so I judged myself all the time. Once I accepted that I’m always learning, a mistake just became the next thing to work on. Less “what’s wrong with me”, more “I need to get better at this, and this, and this”. It’s a much lighter way to live.

It changed the work too. I listen longer before I pitch an idea. I ask more questions on a brief, and the answers usually lead somewhere better than what I walked in with. Clients feel that. The work I’m proudest of came after I stopped trying to look like I knew everything.

I don’t think this is something you learn once. Every new client, city and tool is a chance to be a beginner again. I’d rather choose that on purpose than wait for a city to remind me.