---
title: "Feeling Stupid is Highly Recommended"
url: "https://www.5whys.com/articles/feeling-stupid-is-highly-recommended.md"
canonical: "https://www.5whys.com/articles/feeling-stupid-is-highly-recommended.html"
published: "2013-02-10T17:00:37.343000+00:00"
updated: "2013-02-10T17:09:10.857000+00:00"
tags: ["Growing People"]
author: "Roy Osherove"
description: "Videos of Roy Osherove's first two days of skiing, used to show that feeling stupid and frustrated is a normal and necessary part of learning a new skill."
usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)."
license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
---

# Feeling Stupid is Highly Recommended

So, to show you that the whole idea of taking risks and feeling stupid or frustrated is actually a good thing, because it's the only way to really learn a new skill, here are videos from my second day ever doing any kind of skiing. This is from a few hours ago:

[![](https://www.5whys.com/img/video/youtube-W_alfZdN9dg.jpg)Watch on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_alfZdN9dg)

Feeling Stupid is Highly Recommended 1

[![](https://www.5whys.com/img/video/youtube-Csm2pdGNoGM.jpg)Watch on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Csm2pdGNoGM)

Feeling Stupid is Highly Recommended 2

this is from the first day

[![](https://www.5whys.com/img/video/youtube--TVFXzqxwc0.jpg)Watch on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TVFXzqxwc0)

Feeling Stupid is Highly Recommended 3 (the first day)

My muscles are still calling for help, but on the second day, things are much much better. I am happy I didn't give up trying, and I watched a lot of online videos on how to successfully get up after falling from skies. The first day was HELL. Second day - Not Hell, but a country side road with a view to hell very close by.

## Read next

- [What should a good code review look and feel like?](https://www.5whys.com/articles/what-should-a-good-code-review-look-and-feel-like.html): How a good code review should feel: short, in person, side by side, done by everyone on the team, and aimed at learning rather than tool comments.
- [Growing developers: Ask for solutions instead of giving them](https://www.5whys.com/articles/growing-developers-ask-for-solutions-instead-of-giving-them.html): Why a team leader should ask developers for three possible solutions instead of handing out answers, and what to do when they can't decide or lack skills.
- [The Fear Of Failure And What To Do About It](https://www.5whys.com/articles/the-fear-of-failure-and-what-to-do-about-it.html): Using a Milton Glaser video on the fear of failure, a look at why team leaders must take personal risks and how timed experiments can lower them.


---

## About the author

**Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery.

### Sites

- [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership.
- [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts.
- [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin.
- [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model.
- [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps.
- [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes).

### Social

- X: https://x.com/royosherove
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/

### Contact

- Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7

### License

Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/