That clean haircut took somebody years of crooked ones to learn. Respect the invisible reps.

Competence looks like ease, and ease hides its own history. What you see in ten minutes of skilled work is the surface of thousands of hours you were not there for, most of them clumsy and unpaid. Missing that makes other people’s ability look like a gift and your own beginning look like evidence against you.

Ask someone good at something what their early work was like. Then apply the same arithmetic to yourself and count the hours you have actually put in, rather than comparing your start to their middle. The reps are invisible from outside, including your own.