Feeling Lost as a Barista? How to Adjust Your Mindset While Working in a Coffee Shop?

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Before Becoming a Barista: The Initial Passion

"Wow! I love coffee so much! I love the feeling of making coffee! I want to be a barista!"

After Becoming a Barista: The Reality

(Opening your eyes, thinking about work starting with endless coffee making and cup washing...) "Ah, getting ready for work again, so tired!"

Believe that most baristas have experienced this feeling of helplessness at some point. Every day when opening social platforms, we can see many baristas feeling confused about their work. The main reasons include: frustration with the progress of learning coffee knowledge, boredom with work, career exhaustion, self-doubt, and lack of goals. How should baristas adjust in such situations?

How to Adjust When Feeling Frustrated While Learning New Knowledge?

Nowadays, there are more and more coffee training courses. Many friends who want to enter the coffee industry will first take relevant courses and then apply for barista positions. During the training period, we can always absorb a lot of coffee knowledge that we never thought of before, and there are many very interesting practical courses. However, after completing the course, everything begins to slow down, and after leaving the training center, it seems like we haven't learned anything new.

Don't be discouraged! This is normal. During the training period is actually when our enthusiasm and energy are at their peak. At this time, whether it's the rich knowledge from the courses or the interesting practical content, it can satisfy our curiosity and help us learn everything quickly. However, after the energy burst, things will start to stabilize. At this point, the new knowledge learned is an advanced version of every content learned in the course, so it will take more time to research and study.

Training courses help you open many doors to knowledge. After the course ends, what we need to do is to walk into every door and enrich the space inside. This process takes a long time, but the impression will be deeper, and the professionalism will be higher. Knowledge doesn't need to be learned quickly, only to be able to apply what is learned.

How to Adjust When Feeling Bored as a Barista?

Honestly, feeling bored is an experience that almost every barista has had. Repeatedly making drinks on the menu every day, washing cups and cleaning every day, indeed makes work always seem so bland. At this time, what we need to do is to challenge ourselves!

Perhaps many baristas don't like to hear criticism from others or have their methods evaluated, but this will cause them to lose opportunities to challenge themselves and also lose much room for improvement. Over the years of working as a writer (the original author), I have enjoyed sharing new research with friends around me/other baristas (that is, everyone shares and drinks together, listens to everyone's different evaluations and makes changes), not for anything else, just to let every cup of coffee show its unique side.

We cannot use the drinks that customers have paid for to experiment, so daily production must adopt the most guaranteed method. However, in our spare time, we can learn more about the principles behind different coffee extraction methods and make different attempts. Through sharing, we can continuously improve our professionalism. Everyone's evaluation is a driving force for the growth of a barista.

How to Adjust When Feeling Exhausted as a Barista?

When a barista feels exhausted, it may be due to tiredness from monotonous work. Some baristas, after working for a period of time, will begin to lose motivation in their daily lives, and making coffee and serving customers every day has become a chore... When you have this feeling of exhaustion, what you need to do is to get out of this low state!

We cannot stop working, nor can we escape from the responsibilities of work, but we can give ourselves a new perspective! Don't be afraid of making mistakes, only be afraid of not doing anything. We can go to some forums, groups, and discuss viewpoints with coffee professionals from different places, and understand the latest coffee trends. Then suddenly you will discover many new things!

The exhaustion here is closely related to the boredom mentioned above, because we haven't learned more new things, nor have we challenged ourselves with new projects or setting new goals. So when we feel exhausted, we need to ask ourselves, what's the next step? Is it to continue in the comfort zone, or to raise new questions for ourselves and learn more beyond the existing work content.

How to Adjust When Experiencing Self-Doubt as a Barista?

Whether it's a barista who is new to the industry or an experienced one, they will occasionally feel self-doubt. There is no quick solution to this problem. The important thing is not to let yourself lack confidence, hinder your direction forward, or prevent yourself from becoming a more professional barista.

Things don't always go as you wish. Sometimes the latte art may lack symmetry and needs practice, sometimes the extraction time/coffee taste may be wrong and needs adjustment. These "failures" can easily make a barista doubt themselves.

Facing such situations, we need to view them as a good thing. It is precisely because of "failures" that we are challenged and given room for improvement. If there's something you're struggling with, face it directly and solve it. Practice, practice, and practice again!

Are Goals Important? Yes!

Many friends working as baristas don't set clear requirements for themselves or set clear goals, and it's precisely because of no goals or goals that are too big that they have the above-mentioned problems. Perhaps many baristas' goals are to participate in competitions and gain fame, but such goals are actually not easy for ordinary people because they require investing a lot of cost and also knowing how to manage teams, etc.

Competing is like a business, which not only requires funds but also needs to understand investment and operation. If you set the goal too high at the beginning, the process will be very torturous, and eventually you will gradually lose enthusiasm for coffee-related things and fall into confusion.

So the goals you set for yourself must be within your capabilities, while also leaving room to challenge yourself.

Image source: Internet

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