Years ago, I started a job at a company in an industry that was brand new to me. It wasn't long after orientation that I found myself walking the halls from meeting to meeting, head spinning, trying to tread water in the fast-moving corporate river.

That was when I bumped into an executive several levels above me in the pecking order. And he must've seen the lost-ness written on my face, because he stopped me for a moment. He advised me to take it easy, to not go too hard on myself. Told me that it was a lot to take in, and that it would just take time to fully absorb. That it took him almost a year to get to that point when he first joined, 15+ years before.

He didn't have to take a moment out of his busy day to stop and say that, and I was appreciative.

Really, though. A year?

A year is such a long time. So many things can happen in and outside of your office walls in that amount of time. 365 days can pass in the blink of an eye, but it's still a whole lot of days. In this modern world where so much innovation, effort, and capital goes into maximizing productivity, what makes this months- or year-long expectation one that we still take for granted?

I think one big answer to that can be taken from the exec's words to me that day.

You see, he had a fleeting but palpable sense of pride in recounting the effort and the struggle in those early days at the company, and he was far from the first or last I've heard that from - myself included, though I'm a little embarrassed to admit it.

We amble through our first months in a role, stumbling and screwing up, sometimes in costly ways. And it's more or less accounted for... we're expected to! Even though in most cases on day 1 we're already being paid the same we will on day 100.

It doesn't make much sense. And if there was a silver bullet for the problem, we'd probably all know about it.

One thing that would go a very long way here, though, is contextually surfaced knowledge. That's a mouthful, so let's call it "the book" instead.

Let's start with what "the book" is not.

The best of the best day- or week-one training modules out there can impart a great deal of information effectively, but they slip away from your mind as other distractions kick in.

It's like memorizing a lengthy guide to some city you know nothing about, acing the exam on it, and then moving there without that book.

You know who has the book? Doctors. Lawyers. Academics. As a kid, I had assumed that these accomplished individuals memorized everything they ever needed to know during their many years of school and training... then I saw the book. Books, I should say. Hundreds, lining the walls of offices, ready and waiting to be referenced in a moment of need, even if it's a moment of doubt or understandable forgetfulness that the cameras won't necessarily capture.

That was, of course, before digital resources made that whole process infinitely easier, faster, and more compact. Now there's no reason for the book not to exist wherever and whenever it's needed.

Let's face it: most jobs out there aren't quite as complex as those mentioned above. A five-year veteran at a company is most likely fluent in the vernacular of both the organization and the industry, has a deep sense of company policy and how to handle a wide variety of situations per that policy.

So: where's your book? Is it scattered across all kinds of docs and other files, some collaborative and some static? Or, worse, does it live solely in the minds of the long-timers, passed down like some kind of prehistoric storytelling tradition?

If not, I am happy for you.

If so, consider why that is. Bringing the valuable knowledge of that book to light at precisely the right moment can take those 365 days and cut them down massively. If a newbie gets added to an email thread full of alien language and concepts, demystifing it ought to be a simple and near-instant action.

The "scars" we bear from having to learn things the hard way can be points of pride for many. But I can honestly say that I don't need scars to do my best work.

Just give me the book.

-Erik