Resolve
My social media feeds are currently awash with everyone’s New Year’s resolutions (and in some cases, anti-resolutions); it’s always interesting to see what challenges people are setting themselves, from the small lifestyle adjustments to the huge, ambitious plans. There is also a plethora of advice on how to make resolutions, set goals, stay committed, go vegan, lose weight, quit drinking, get healthy, be more productive… It’s sooo tempting to think “yeah, I can do all of that!” and set an impossibly high bar, only to get disillusioned when the reality of a long, cold, dark January kicks in.
One of the biggest problems I see with making resolutions is very similar to one I see all the time at work. We start with the assumption that someone else knows better than we do.
Just let that sink in for a moment.
How often do you find yourself not trusting the little voice inside that says, “well, that can’t be right”? How many times have you gone along with something you had a bad feeling about, because the person directing the action was more senior or experienced than you? And can you count the number of times you’ve been in the middle of an incident, outage or post-mortem and wished you had spoken up sooner? Certainly for me, the answers to those questions are ‘frequently’, ‘thousands’ and ‘no, I can’t — there’s too many’.
The tech industry is littered with frameworks and methodologies, certifications and experts (and “experts” — there are a lot of people making a lot of money by perpetuating that sense of ‘I know better than you do’). Some get very purist and evangelical about these things, others get very protective of their knowledge and position as an SME.
There’s a reason all these things happen, and that reason is fear — yep, it’s good old Impostor Syndrome rearing its stupid head. We fail to act out of fear of looking stupid, or fear of shouldering responsibility for a decision, or perhaps even fear of overt ridicule. Much as we fear being on the receiving end of criticism, we are also often afraid of questioning others, causing offence or upset. Whatever the specifics, we mute our instincts and tell ourselves that we couldn’t possibly be right — someone else (someone cleverer, more “technical”) would have spotted that error, surely?
Not necessarily.
I have seen junior team members find flaws their senior colleagues missed. I’ve witnessed (so-called) non-technical people spot problems within complex solutions. Raw graduates have been known to come up with better answers than Execs (in fact, that warrants a whole blog post in itself…). It happens — but don’t just take my word for it, try it yourself.
Earlier today, I saw a tweet from April Wensel, founder of Compassionate Coding, in which she said:
My advice on finding a mentor: mentor yourself.
Seek out different perspectives, sure. Ask questions. Read. Keep an open mind.
But trust your inner wise self.
And she’s absolutely right.
Yes, those frameworks and methods are useful — but don’t restrict yourself to slavishly following something that doesn’t fit your context. And sure, the Senior Dev on your team has deep knowledge, but they are not infallible. No-one else has the unique mix of experiences and connections that your brain contains. Not everyone will spot the things you see; sometimes no-one else will. No matter who you are, what your background, where you are in your career — your voice is valid and necessary (and will sometimes be wrong, but that’s totally ok too — see my last post for more on that).
So this year, instead of coming up with a list resolutions that are just someone else’s vision of how to be you, maybe resolve to trust yourself to be you as you are — only louder.
Happy New Year.
Originally published at kninki.wordpress.com on December 30, 2018.
