I’ve been reading The Wharton School’s Most Popular Negotiation Course lately. There are two practical tips you can pick up quickly:

1. Before doing something you’re not sure about, find someone to role-play it with you.
2. Move fast, and don’t let anxiety take over.

The Importance of Rehearsal

Practicing with a friend or colleague before an interview or negotiation lets you run through interpersonal scenarios from different perspectives. It can roughly eliminate the 20% of mistakes that come from personal blind spots.

The most important thing in dealing with people isn’t expertise—it’s perspective. The more experienced someone is in a given domain, the more likely they are to overlook the importance of perspective. Studies show that experienced people are particularly unwilling to listen to others’ views. Those who are good at humbling themselves tend to find more opportunities in social settings—they’re more willing to listen, and therefore better understand the other party’s needs.

Jump into the Stream of Information and Learn to Swim

Standing on the shore watching won’t teach you to swim; sometimes you have to be brave enough to dive in. Often, what you’re missing isn’t information—it’s the action of jumping into the flow.

For example, large companies only want to hire people with work experience. The way a company works is a complex flow of information between people, and the best way to understand it is to participate. For a new graduate, the first task is to use internships, freelance gigs, and other opportunities to get involved—not to take more courses.

Hand on enablement. The nature of some anxiety is a lack of action. The internet has made people habitually collect information instead of taking action.

I was recently going back and forth on whether to buy a car for getting around. I realized the reason I couldn’t decide was that I lacked opportunities to drive, and didn’t understand my own needs. So the question “should I buy a car?” could be reframed for me as “create conditions to drive.” The next step is to rent a car and figure out my own needs.

Moving fast also gives you a fresh perspective. You’ll find that this shares something in common with the rehearsal we talked about earlier: a shallow understanding from many perspectives often beats deep research from a single one.

Let’s do it.