Competency: You Know It When You See It

There are many levels of competency and awareness when it comes to assessing one’s own work. Judging one’s own work is difficult for a number of reasons. For one, we become invested in our own work and the quality of the work loses emphasis for the sake of trying to create meaning. That may sound contradictory: losing emphasis by trying to create meaning. But what happens is the author tends to reach for meaning and as he does so remembers all the previous arguments that build up – some foundational point – that leads to the argument.

Then you get sidetracked.

Many of my blogs/essays run in this way. The biggest trick is to keep the topic as narrow as possible while still forwarding information as fresh and interesting. I do this all the time. Obviously. this is one reason why I keep finding myself summarizing what’s gone on before.

So then: Judging one’s work: One of the hardest things to do is to read – physically read! – one’s own work. It’s an interesting exercise. I have found it very very difficult to reread my work, but the benefits of doing so really pay off.

Okay – so to narrow the subject of this blog: read your own work to assess its level of competency.

Next up: how to assess the competency of your own work.