Programmers should always know what they are doing.

Right? You'd think that people who are well-paid, powerful, and often extensively educated would be certain about what they are making. We don't think of Mark Zuckerberg wondering whether he should create Facebook; we imagine him having a plan to create it, screw his partners over, and become rich. This belief has some knock-on effects:

• Beginners feel stressed that they, unlike "everyone else", have to learn how things work.

• Programmers feel embarrassed to ask for help.

• Even experts can feel anxious when they have to investigate to find out why something works the way it does.

But as a professional programmer, I exist in a state of uncertainty.

Rarely do I know exactly what I am doing, and how to do it.

If I've coded something, I don't ever need to make that identical solution again. So I almost never have do the same thing twice. Also, I spend a lot of time debugging code. By definition, I don't know what the solution is! if I did, I would move ahead and implement it. This is hard to emotionally accept -- I know I struggle with it. As much as I logically know it to be true, it's hard to feel it in my bones.

It's not easy, but it's empowering to accept that it's ok to not know.

Really take the time to think about what that means.

All you have to do is make progress. You don't have to know what the solution is upfront. Even finding something that doesn't work has ruled that out! Isn't that much better than not knowing that?

You're not all-knowing. But no one else is either.

Can you think of anyone that knows everything about programming?

I can't. So why should you be the only one held to those standards? It's unfair of you to hinder yourself with that belief. Let yourself free, and see how much more you accomplish.