Confidence Can Start Before You Know How It Ends
You have an idea you love. Then you open the software you need to make it happen, and a menu asks you a question you do not understand.
Five minutes ago, you were imagining the finished project. Now you are searching for a tutorial made by someone who apparently believes everyone was born knowing where the settings live.
This is an awkward place to judge your entire future.
It is, however, a perfectly useful place to identify something you could learn.
Psychologists use the term self-efficacy for a person's belief in their ability to carry out a particular task. The specificity matters. Feeling capable of editing a short video is different from being certain that a channel will succeed. You can become more confident about an action while remaining unsure about the larger outcome. [1]
In Albert Bandura's account, one source of that belief is a mastery experience: actually accomplishing something. The American Psychological Association describes how previous success at a task can support belief in your ability to handle similar tasks. Encouragement and observing other people are also sources; you do not have to figure everything out alone. [2]
That offers a useful way to approach an ambitious project. Instead of requiring confidence in the whole undertaking before beginning, look for a piece you can practice and assess.
Suppose you want to make a short film. “Can I become a filmmaker?” is a large question to put in front of an empty afternoon. “Can I record a clear thirty-second scene?” gives you something to try. You can listen back, notice the traffic drowning out your voice, move somewhere quieter and record again.
The second recording does not predict an audience, a career or an award. It can tell you whether you solved that sound problem. Give the result credit for exactly what it shows.
There is another useful distinction here: doing work and noticing what the work changed.
A meta-analysis by Benjamin Harkin and colleagues examined 138 studies involving 19,951 participants. On average, interventions designed to increase progress monitoring improved goal attainment. Effects were larger in studies where progress information was physically recorded. The paper appeared online in 2015 and in a 2016 journal issue. [3]
That is evidence about monitoring progress across the goals studied, not proof that keeping a notebook will make a business succeed. But it gives a research-backed reason to pay attention to what happened, rather than relying entirely on how productive the day felt.
Here is one modest way to put that idea to work. Choose a task small enough to attempt within the time you actually have. Decide what would count as improvement. Afterward, write a sentence about what you can now do, what remains unresolved and what you might try next. This is a practical suggestion inspired by the research, not a tested three-part formula.
Your note might say: “The recording is clearer indoors. Next time, check the volume before doing the whole scene.” Hardly a glamorous entry. Quite useful when you return tomorrow.
Keep the uncomfortable information, too. If an approach repeatedly fails, you may need instruction, different equipment, another method or a smaller project. Asking for help belongs in the process. So does deciding that a particular route is not worth its cost. You are learning enough to make a decision, not collecting reasons to continue forever.
Other people's questions can help with that. “How will you do this?” may reveal a gap worth investigating. You can consider the question without treating your unfinished answer as a final verdict on your ability.
For today, choose one thing you would like to know how to do. Give it an honest attempt, with whatever guidance is available. Then look at the result.
You do not need to know how the whole story ends to give yourself something real to build on.
Sources & further reading
1. American Psychological Association. Teaching Tip Sheet: Self-Efficacy. 2009, as identified in the APA 2025 research overview.
https://www.apa.org/pi/aids/resources/education/self-efficacy
2. Kirsten Weir. Self-efficacy: The theory at the heart of human agency. American Psychological Association. October 22, 2025.
https://www.apa.org/research-practice/conduct-research/self-efficacy-human-agency
3. Benjamin Harkin and colleagues. Does monitoring goal progress promote goal attainment? A meta-analysis of the experimental evidence. Psychological Bulletin 142(2), 198–229. DOI: 10.1037/bul0000025. Online October 19, 2015; journal issue February 2016.
https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/bul-bul0000025.pdf
