Failing is OK
Hey!
Welcome back to another week of musings. This past week, we had great weather in the Bay, and I spent most afternoons walking around the city.
I took Friday off to rest and recharge. I hope your weekend was recharging for you as well!
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I tend to talk a lot about prioritization, probably because it is the area where I fail the most.
I constantly try to remind myself of everything I've discussed in the past, including delegating or controlling my calendar. I also discuss with managers having their teams take on specific tasks.
No one is infallible
No one is infallible, and I constantly remind myself of this. Once I fail, I feel like everyone else is doing their best and succeeding, which makes me feel worse.
Under these circumstances, I tend to lean into my peer group to not only share my story, but they tend to share their fallings and empathize with mine.
These help me get out of the headspace I'm currently in and focus on how to get out.
Asking for help is required
I sometimes take too long to ask for help. In some cases, while we share updates, the struggle doesn't come across, and your manager might not be able to know if you need help or not. In other cases, we feel that maybe we can do it all ourselves because, on the surface, it might appear simple.
Over the years, I've become better at this, but I fail when I'm either overwhelmed by the amount of work or hyperfocused and get tunnel vision. In these cases, I like discussing projects with my manager or peers.
Keep showing up
While we're not perfect, we get better by showing up again and again after each "defeat" in our careers.
Over time, I've become better at recognizing and attempting not to fail or reducing failure. I cannot avoid failure at other times, but I understand enough to improve next time. The critical piece for me has been developing self-awareness of failure, how it affected other people, and how I felt.
Give yourself grace
Sometimes, it's easy for us to forgive others for their failures but not ourselves. We tend to be our harshest critics.
While holding ourselves accountable to high standards is great, it must be done realistically and sustainably. We need to manage our expectations with ourselves and accept what we did right and wrong and what we'll change for next time.
Your turn!
How do you deal with your failures at work? How do you deal with being overwhelmed or overworked? Let me know by replying to this email!
Happy coding!
Things I discovered in the past week
- What to learn is a great piece by Dan Luu, that I discovered while googling about the law of the instrument.
- Software Development As Collective Learning With Hazel Weakly an interesting interview about leadership and adaptability.
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