Being a better human, one week at a time
I am a flawed person. Everyone is.
A year or two ago I have started to watch my personality traits more closely, as they negatively affected my life: a disagreement with a colleague blocking a common way forward, a bin that should be been taken out that starts to stink, a messed up sleep schedule that made the next few days miserable.
I would love to solve all of them. I find them annoying and I know a person doing their best lives more enjoyable life. "It is not possible to solve everything" feels true, but on the other hand I still have several decades to prove this claim wrong.
Let me tell you, fighting your brain is hard work, with lots of obstacles and derailments trying to push you off-course.
At work
My manager hates it when I take up more work than I should have. Whenever I pick up work someone else should be doing, they make it very clear they are upset with my behavior. You can imagine a kindergarten where a teacher is correcting you for taking the last piece of candy even though you already had one and some other kids did not. That is how it feels like.
I have to force myself to think about what I am doing: "Is this something only I can do, or can/should this be picked up by someone else?" Each role has a primary responsibility, a direction, and description of problems that cannot be solved by anybody else. For each task I choose, I am forcing myself to ask: "Is someone else capable of doing this?"
I fail a lot. Unclear boundaries between team roles do not help.
I have made my backlog and work log visible to everyone so they could check what I have been doing. Every once in a while my manager opens the list when we talk and asks me questions.
- "Is your expertise necessary to do this?"
- "Well, no one else knows what to do."
- "Could that be solved by explaining the situation and the end state, instead of you doing all the work?"
It is better than winning a lottery, to have a manager that actually cares about the long-term well-being in actions, not just in words.
"If you let others do it this time, the next time it will not even land on your backlog."
"You are denying them the opportunity to learn."
Last week I was called out for not being able to shut off my brain during the weekend.
- "Thinking is working. You should leave early today to make up for that."
- "You can tell your own brain to focus on something else?"
- "I do not care. Find a new hobby."
I am glad for these conversations, I know the external view tends to be the correct one, even if it is frustrating at the moment.
At home
I hate washing the dishes. More than anything else from the house chores. Dishwasher does not fit into my apartment, I have to do it the old way. I have disliked it since I can remember.
When the sink could not be used to fill a glass of water recently, and everything got out of hands in general, I decided to finally fight it. Every time I finish a meal of any size, I force myself to wash the plate, the spoon, and everything involved immediately. If I ate at the computer desk, I do not leave the plate on the edge for later, I force myself to get up and do it now.
So far I am holding up... fine. Today I have left the pan on the stove top, because I knew I would need it again tomorrow lunch time, and I would get it all oily again. The plates are clean. I call it a compromise.
The self-improvement path is long and slow
Sometimes it is hard to even identify what is wrong.
Do I hate going to work, or is it just that repository with no tests and an internal structure of stale carbonara?
Do I have depression, or have I been spending three hours scrolling Instagram for the past two months?
Does my friend secretly hate me, or are the mimicking my incomprehensible texting patterns I am not used to seeing on the receiving side?
There are methods for this. Ask your therapist, or a not-so-close friend might help (they will not have bias by not knowing all the details close friends might).
The Atomic Habits book was not bad, though it could have been a three-part blog post series. That would not sell though, I guess.