A mistake at a new job feels huge on day three. By month three it’s a funny story you tell the next new person.

Size depends on how much context you have, and on day three you have almost none. With no sense of what normally goes wrong, your error looks like the only one that has ever happened, when in fact everybody there has a version of it. Time does not shrink the mistake. It gives you the background that puts it in proportion.

If you have just done something mortifying at work, tell someone who has been there longer. They will almost certainly tell you theirs. Then write down what you learned, and plan to be the one who reassures the next new starter.