Tamrielo

So many people I know are loathe to talk about themselves, particularly about things they’re good at. They will hasten to deflect compliments and deny endorsements like they’re warding off demons, lest even accepting praise mark them as a braggart, that most terrible of labels. We’ve accepted this as standard, even praised it as “humility”, without realizing that our underestimation of ourselves limits both us and the people around us.

I’ve seen people oscillate between wanting to be recognized for their achievements and not wanting to call attention to themselves, even when it’s warranted. I’ve seen people overlook other people because they don’t realize what their skills are. I’ve known people for years without realizing what they’re capable of, because we’re so trained to avoid talking about ourselves.

When we see people who do talk about themselves, and we see their success, we’re often resentful. I’ve been there, and silently raged at someone whose self-aggrandizement got them attention and praise while my silent, hard work went ignored.

We can’t know what everyone around us is good at, unless we see them at it or they tell us. By extension, everyone around us can’t know what we’re good at unless we tell them. It’s not just okay, but important that people know what we’re good at, because that helps us all solve problems more efficiently and effectively. Communication is important, quite possibly the most important thing, and part of that communication is allowing others the opportunity to know what we can be relied upon to do.

I poured a ton of work into perfecting a prototype at one point, submitted it to my boss, and proceeded to have it ignored for years. I didn’t want to come off as arrogant or pushy, so I left my initial pitch and left it without further comment. This frustrated me, and festered, and when, years later, I was told that I should demonstrate building something unique and interesting, I was livid– I’d done exactly that and was completely ignored. In not communicating this thing that I had done and done well, I had simultaneously absolved myself of responsibility for recognizing it.

Here’s the thing: no one knew that prototype better than I did. No one knew that it had survived, stable and without problems, through more than a hundred codebase iterations. No one knew that it was implementable from scratch in less than an hour, and was modular enough that every implementation could easily be unique. All of these things were valuable, but in expecting other people to notice the work that I’d done, in being “humble” about my work and not self-promoting, I had pushed the responsibility for recognizing the strengths of my work on people who weren’t in a position to realize them.

A few friends of mine, after reading my post on Impostor Syndrome, suggested that impostor syndrome could be called “humility” elsewhere, and implied that it was a good thing to be, as one person put it, “realistic about your shortcomings”. I don’t disagree that being realistic about one’s own shortcomings is valuable, but recognizing shortcomings without also recognizing one’s strengths is very problematic. It dooms us to laboring unseen and unrecognized, and to resent those around us for not magically realizing how awesome we are. It can be very damaging, as that lack of external recognition (through a simple lack of knowledge) turns inward, making us disbelieve our own skills and making us worse at what we do.

It doesn’t take a lot to find scientific studies that support that we are capable of much more when we believe ourselves capable, and much less when we don’t. When we put ourselves in a downward spiral, where we don’t believe in our own skills, we actually get worse at those skills. When we believe in our skills, we measurably become better at them. It’s why positive feedback is vitally important for any manager, and why specific recognition is crucial. Those things fuel a fire of productivity and capability for us, but we need to start that fire with a spark. That spark is communication– letting people know that there is ample space and material to start a fire.

It’s okay to be good at things. Everyone I know is good at things, and many of them know it, even if they refuse to admit it. Accepting that you’re good at something is a key step in becoming great at them.

Something I’ve picked up recently is how difficult it is to talk about emotions. We define very complex emotions for ourselves, and use them to mask underlying feelings. We’re “stressed”, or “frustrated”, or “excited”, or we “feel like” and follow up with an analogy.

An exercise I’ve done recently cuts to the root of that. It asks people to express feelings, but limits the available emotions to only ones that can be universally understood. Sadness, anger, happiness, and fear are all we’re allowed to use to describe our mental state. Analogies are not emotions, “stressed” isn’t an emotion; we have to revert to those four. The explanation given is that if, say, someone close to you dies, you may have a broad mix of feelings about that, mostly sadness, but the specific way that you’re feeling is unique to you. No one can understand that, but they can understand sadness.

In a way, it removes context from emotion, and I’m continually surprised by how much it isn’t necessary. I don’t need to understand the complexities of office politics or management structures to understand that being passed up for a promotion makes someone angry– I know anger, even if I don’t know the context. It might be a blend of anger and fear– said person is angry about being passed up but afraid to say anything lest they rock the boat too much– I don’t need to understand the politics involved to know the fear. They might even be a little happy to be passed up, because the position wasn’t exactly what they wanted and it means they’re next in line for something they might like better. It can be a very complicated situation, but I can understand the anger, the fear, and the optimistic happiness.

The exercise also forces us to break apart how we feel about things into discrete pieces. I can feel sad and happy about something at the same time, and while I might call that “bittersweet” or “wistful”, I can break it down into simpler terms; bittersweet for me may be a mixture of happiness and sadness, but it could be happiness and anger for someone else. For some people, nostalgia is a blend of happiness and fear– that things have changed and that kind of happiness is lost. Nostalgia might also be happiness and anger– things were good, but they’ve changed and shouldn’t have. Language has endless ways to obscure our true feelings behind elaborate words.

One of the things I’ve caught myself doing since doing the exercise a goodly number of times is mentally reducing my emotions to simplest terms. I find it’s easier for me to understand them, and I’m a lot less conflicted about how I feel about things, because I’m used to forming clear definitions. Simple emotions allow me to feel multiple things at once without getting bogged down, and most things make me feel more than one. I’ve found that it’s easier to express how I feel to other people, and moreover, that I can express myself in such a way that people’s responses make me feel more understood, and thus happy.

One habit I still have is to express my current state in terms of objective fact, leaving the feelings hanging and unexpressed. I’ll state what is happening but not how I feel about it, leaving it up to the listener to infer. I’ll do this when I’m not yet sure how I feel about something, or if I don’t feel strongly about it, or if I’m afraid of being judged if I express how I feel. I’m trying to break myself of this habit, because while it often leads to conversations, it rarely leads to an exchange of feelings, and thus often feels detached or impersonal.

On the other hand, I’ve found that people I would never have expected to understand me can relate when I express myself with just four basic emotions. It felt overly simplistic at first, but I’ve found I’ve been able to communicate a lot more clearly, at least judging by the responses I get, and I find out a lot more about people when I express myself.

We’re heavily socialized to avoid talking about emotions, and tamping down how we feel about things, to the point where we forget that it’s okay to feel things– it’s part of what makes us human. By expressing my own emotions more readily, I’ve found that I can draw out other people’s and allow them the space to express their own emotions, and I always feel closer to that person as a result. I’m very glad that I was in the right frame of mind to be accepting and open to the series of exercises that spawned all of this, because as much as I wish I could share it with everyone I know, I’m aware that not everyone would be as receptive, for any number of reasons.

It’s kind of the other piece of things. It’s okay to feel things, and it’s okay to choose not to share. I just hope that everyone reading this has someone they can share with if they so desire. If not, get in touch with me privately; I’ll talk to you.

Something I’ve picked up recently is how difficult it is to talk about emotions. We define very complex emotions for ourselves, and use them to mask underlying feelings. We’re “stressed”, or “frustrated”, or “excited”, or we “feel like” and follow up with an analogy.

An exercise I’ve done recently cuts to the root of that. It asks people to express feelings, but limits the available emotions to only ones that can be universally understood. Sadness, anger, happiness, and fear are all we’re allowed to use to describe our mental state. Analogies are not emotions, “stressed” isn’t an emotion; we have to revert to those four. The explanation given is that if, say, someone close to you dies, you may have a broad mix of feelings about that, mostly sadness, but the specific way that you’re feeling is unique to you. No one can understand that, but they can understand sadness.

In a way, it removes context from emotion, and I’m continually surprised by how much it isn’t necessary. I don’t need to understand the complexities of office politics or management structures to understand that being passed up for a promotion makes someone angry– I know anger, even if I don’t know the context. It might be a blend of anger and fear– said person is angry about being passed up but afraid to say anything lest they rock the boat too much– I don’t need to understand the politics involved to know the fear. They might even be a little happy to be passed up, because the position wasn’t exactly what they wanted and it means they’re next in line for something they might like better. It can be a very complicated situation, but I can understand the anger, the fear, and the optimistic happiness.

The exercise also forces us to break apart how we feel about things into discrete pieces. I can feel sad and happy about something at the same time, and while I might call that “bittersweet” or “wistful”, I can break it down into simpler terms; bittersweet for me may be a mixture of happiness and sadness, but it could be happiness and anger for someone else. For some people, nostalgia is a blend of happiness and fear– that things have changed and that kind of happiness is lost. Nostalgia might also be happiness and anger– things were good, but they’ve changed and shouldn’t have. Language has endless ways to obscure our true feelings behind elaborate words.

One of the things I’ve caught myself doing since doing the exercise a goodly number of times is mentally reducing my emotions to simplest terms. I find it’s easier for me to understand them, and I’m a lot less conflicted about how I feel about things, because I’m used to forming clear definitions. Simple emotions allow me to feel multiple things at once without getting bogged down, and most things make me feel more than one. I’ve found that it’s easier to express how I feel to other people, and moreover, that I can express myself in such a way that people’s responses make me feel more understood, and thus happy.

One habit I still have is to express my current state in terms of objective fact, leaving the feelings hanging and unexpressed. I’ll state what is happening but not how I feel about it, leaving it up to the listener to infer. I’ll do this when I’m not yet sure how I feel about something, or if I don’t feel strongly about it, or if I’m afraid of being judged if I express how I feel. I’m trying to break myself of this habit, because while it often leads to conversations, it rarely leads to an exchange of feelings, and thus often feels detached or impersonal.

On the other hand, I’ve found that people I would never have expected to understand me can relate when I express myself with just four basic emotions. It felt overly simplistic at first, but I’ve found I’ve been able to communicate a lot more clearly, at least judging by the responses I get, and I find out a lot more about people when I express myself.

We’re heavily socialized to avoid talking about emotions, and tamping down how we feel about things, to the point where we forget that it’s okay to feel things– it’s part of what makes us human. By expressing my own emotions more readily, I’ve found that I can draw out other people’s and allow them the space to express their own emotions, and I always feel closer to that person as a result. I’m very glad that I was in the right frame of mind to be accepting and open to the series of exercises that spawned all of this, because as much as I wish I could share it with everyone I know, I’m aware that not everyone would be as receptive, for any number of reasons.

It’s kind of the other piece of things. It’s okay to feel things, and it’s okay to choose not to share. I just hope that everyone reading this has someone they can share with if they so desire. If not, get in touch with me privately; I’ll talk to you.

I’m really motivated by efficiency. I like to see how things can be done effectively, and once they’re done effectively, how to do them faster, using fewer resources, and in general, “better”. It’s rarely enough for me to get something done; I’d rather get it done well. I had someone the other day ask me about this, and ask me about my process for writing and working, so here we are.

I want to meet this guy’s tailor.

I’m big into efficiency because I’m fundamentally lazy. My mom is nodding her head right now and probably doesn’t know why, but her admonitions during my childhood were pretty much spot on. I don’t like to do unnecessary work, and I like to figure out ways in which I can do things that need doing quickly, because getting things done quickly means less time spent doing them. Speed isn’t everything, though, because getting something done fast but having to do it twice isn’t saving me any time, and I have to retread (boring!) work I’ve done already. “Measure twice, cut once” resonates with me because measuring is a lot less work than cutting, the savings in materials aside.

People ask me how long I spend doing various tasks, and tend to be surprised by my answer. I recently finished a paper for a class in about an hour and a half, for four pages. A classmate of mine expressed surprise that I was so quick; it didn’t seem particularly fast or slow for me. Part of it is that I’m used to writing– these blog posts are 700-1200ish words every day, and I rarely take more than 30-45 minutes writing them. A lot of it, though, is just writing efficiency. I write like I play Tetris, setting up a block of thoughts and massaging them until they’re complete, then moving on. It means I don’t have to keep the entire paper in my head at once and can focus on what I’m saying right now, because I’ve put the previous bits to bed, as it were. A lot of my editing is done on the fly, as I’m writing a sentence. If I’m editing something bigger or that needs deeper review, I ignore it for two or three days and return to it then– my mind is fresh and I’m not still thinking about the details of each paragraph, so I can review it more objectively.

My work process is similar; I look at a task and think about the minimum possible amount of work necessary to complete it, to establish a baseline. From there, I can then add content and broaden the scope reactively, as I work. A lot of times, I find that the parts I think are going to be time-consuming or have little room for further attention turn out to be easier than expected, and that parts I thought would be simple require a lot of careful thought and iteration. Knowing the minimum lets me get something in and functional quickly, then focus on where it can be improved effectively, without wasting time, effort, or resources.

All of this means that I have a long list of little ‘tricks’ to make my life easier, so when something requires a lot of focus and attention, I have the energy to spare. I never really know when these are going to come up, so I try to ensure that my daily energy expenditure is conservative, to keep that reserve going. I used to be apologetic about this, now I’m simply straightforward about it. Sometimes I don’t put in extra energy because that reserve is getting low, and that reserve is what allows me to keep a cool head in a crisis, or juggle lots of different things at once.

I’ve found it’s always worth taking the time to think about the process, because process is where a lot of work and time is lost. Sometimes the best solution isn’t necessarily the most complete one, just because the most complete one isn’t efficient. Coming up with a highly elegant, reusable and revisable script to automate a task I’m only going to do once isn’t terribly efficient; sure it does the work quickly, but I could do it by hand in about the same amount of time and run less risk of wasting a lot of effort. To that point, risk management is an important part of my process; if something I’m trying to make a task complete faster might end with me wasting a ton of time and not moving forward with the actual task, that’s a fairly high risk, and probably one I’ll avoid.

I don’t know how much of this is interesting or useful to anyone; all of the things I’m saying sound like really obvious, “duh tam, everyone knows that” kinds of thoughts. I’m still not yet great at getting out of my own head enough to know what things are obvious to everyone and which are obvious just to me and useful to others. Working on it, though, we’ll see.