Am I lying to myself?

“My mission is to help others becoming a better version of themselves, often by helping them understand that perceived obstacles in their way simply vanish with a perspective shift.”

Plausible? yes. Definitely descriptive, in hindsight, of most of my endeavours over the last 20 years. It has a nice unifying ring to it. But is it true?

This is, for the last ten days, the topic that keeps my thoughts animated most of the time.

The situation emerged during a workshop I attended as part of the incubator program I joined last summer. The facilitator was describing the bumps in the road that entrepreneurs commonly encounter during their first year. In her view, one way to go over them is to refer back to intrinsic motivations, and that was the lead-up to a group exercise where we had to challenge each other to phrase a personal statement about our motivation. The criteria, as she explained, was that we would know when we got it right because it would cause an emotional response when we would reach the right phrasing.

While I was initially sceptical, during my dialogue with the other participants, I helped and observed others reach that moment when they attained this emotional response. It was interesting to see and satisfying to accompany.

Then when I was challenged to deliver my own piece, the statement above came extremely naturally to me, without hesitation. It sounded true, it is definitely plausible, and it is definitely internally coherent with both the various things I have done in the past and the new things I announced (to this group) I would do next.

Yet, I did not experience this emotional response that I could see in others. What does this mean?

There are two possible explanations. Either I was lying to myself; or the particular makeup of my personality and psychology does not enable that emotional response even for true statements. (Or, alternatively, I was not sufficiently emotionally available that day to recognize or experience the emotion. Which boils down to the same.)

After a week, I still cannot figure out which one it is! This is incredibly frustrating.

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One reason why this topic is incredibly important right now is that I am incidentally looking for a common thread to tie together a few scripts that I would like to narrate online (blogs, videos etc) about my projects. This ambition to publish about my projects is simultaneously a business imperative (for marketing purposes) and also a long-held desire to become more legible within my community. I was already referring to this a bit more than a year ago. I pride myself with my claim to a certain degree of authenticity and it would make me deeply uncomfortable to lay the edifice of a personal story on top of a shaky motivational foundation.

Another reason why this is incredibly important is that if the statement is, in fact, true, it would deeply impact the way I relate to a team if/when I start my next multi-person endeavour. In the past, I have advertised and let others rely on my ability to teach, to solve problems, to inspire, to keep my head cool in tricky situations. I know how to find my way around complex systems, and show others how to find theirs. There’s solid, serious economic value built into this profile. How much of this value remains if I start claiming that the main thing that motivates me is not to solve (business) problems, but to help others “become their best self”? I know (from experience) I can lead teams, but would they be willing to be led by someone they cannot look up to regarding the values they care about (solve problems, do complex things)?

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Maybe, just maybe, there could be multiple concurrent narratives here. Maybe me being a skilled professional can remain valuable and maybe I can continue to accept it in addition to shifting gears to different priorities. Maybe they can even be combined.

An analogous yet less momentous situation I often struggle with is that I cook well and I do not like cooking. I have always believed that the act of sharing food is highly symbolic and thus I feel that I am betraying my friends and family when I delight them with food while disliking the activity of cooking. But perhaps this belief is wrong. Perhaps the act of cooking does not matter and instead the act of delighting others is what matters. Maybe I have my symbols wrong?

And perhaps the “truth” of motivation statements is just a figment of our imagination and nothing else matters than actions and the stories we tell each other. Maybe it does not matter whether the stories are true, as long as they help us feel connected—and, in the context of business, help facilitate transactions.

Yet, I still feel uncomfortable.

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Last month I watched this short video from Ben Cole-Edwards. It touched me profoundly, and I feel it might be connected to the above. Here is the transcript:

Listen, you’ve been through a lot.

It is what it is.

What do you mean?

It is what it is.

What it is, is trauma.

Well, if you put it like that… (laugh)

Why are you laughing?

If I don’t laugh, I’d cry.

Then, cry.

I can’t.

Why not?

Whenever I cried as a child, I was told: “If you don’t stop crying, I’ll give you something to cry about.”

We usually laugh at our trauma to make us feel better. Because our parents said that it wasn’t trauma. And we want to be good kids so we play along and pretend like they’re right. What you’ve been through takes a lot of strength.

Yeah, so I’m told. But I don’t feel strong.

The reason you don’t feel strong is because strength is your default. If you always had to be strong every day then strength becomes your normality. Which is why sometimes when you act like a normal human being you mistake it for weakness. This is also why peace is so far out of your comfort zone. Because when nothing in your life is going wrong, you’ve got nothing to be strong for, you got nothing to prepare for, so it doesn’t feel right, so you look for the chaos. You deserve peace.

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In an unrelated note, here’s the overall life recap of last month. I went to sing karaoke with friends. It was nice to reconnect with that group, and it was nice to discover Duke of Tokyo. Their inside wall art is fantastic. I furnished my guest room and, for the first time since the house project finished, hosted a friend with a full size guest bed. It made me proud.

I made significant progress with furnishing my personal “rec space”; including driving through half the country to fetch some equipment. Despite only saving ~200€ through this expedition, my monkey brain experienced the joy and satisfaction of a good hunting haul.

I also went to a “zen-funk” music concert featuring Nik Bärtsch, and it was pleasant to share this experience with friends. I also acquired a leaf blower! It feels very much like an “old person toy” and yet highly necessary to get rid of leaves off gravel to keep things tidy visually.

Another highlight was an extended weekend stay in Helsinki, Finland.

Ostensibly a visit to project partners, this trip was really an excuse to spend some quality time with a dear friend and much joy ensured. We even experienced the luxury of relatively dry weather and pleasant fall temperatures. I had a brief desire to hop over and visit Tallinn, but sadly it did not come to pass this time. I have at least one reason to come back.

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On November 21, it snowed!

When I woke up and saw the snow flakes on my window, I opened it and looked outside. The snow was sticking on the roof tiles and the windows! Even though it was warm inside! It felt good to see the snow stay on my roof, and melt on the neighbor’s. It is satisfying to see evidence that all the new insulation actually works.

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Last month, I also received the utmost privilege to listen to Wiebe Wakker, who drove 34.000 kilometers and more than two years (!!) from the Netherlands to Australia, without money, and only using electricity. To hear a real flesh adventurer talk about his journey and his experience was both incredibly fun and awe-inspiring.

His was a story of resilience, creativity, ingenuity, but also foremost one of trust. It turns out folk through the world are willing to help if you just ask, and Wiebe himself did not believe this until he experienced it for himself. We learned about him, about the countries he drove through, the people he encountered. I even had a personal conversation with him afterwards, where he revealed to me that as an introvert person it was incredibly taxing for him to entertain his 1800 hosts, day in and day out, that he suffered a burnout afterwards, that sitting in a car for two years took a toll on his body, and that this also taught him a great deal about his own boundaries. And despite this ordeal, he remains keen to share his story and inspire others to embark on their own journey.

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When the idea came to me, afterwards, to seek where to find more adventurers to hear from, I discovered the platform Sprekershuys. This is a Dutch company that serves as middleman between people who have a story to tell and people who want to hear stories, and puts them in touch with each other for a 20% fee.

This business idea is excellent and also extremely well executed. I am impressed. It also feels so typically Dutch! I do not recall having seen anything similar in other countries, even in the US. (If you know of anything similar where you are, please let me know. I’d be curious.)

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Here’s another touching and important video from Chris Gad, Why does unmasking make it hard to do things:

Here’s a transcript if you can’t watch it or don’t have the time:

I can’t do the things I used to do anymore.

Oh, what’s going on big guy?

Ever since I’ve started working with you on masking less, it just feels like I’m not good at anything anymore.

Ah, yeah. Yes, that’s skill regression.

Why does it happen?

Because you stopped masking.

I haven’t stopped masking. I’m just doing it less.

Potayto, potahto.

I’m going to leave if you’re not going to help.

You’re gotten real sassy lately.

Potayto, potahto.

Hem. You mask because because you’ve been taught it’s your responsibility to manage other people’s emotions.

Meet others at their level, yeah.

And now you’re trying to find a balance. You’re focusing more on taking care of yourself.

But shouldn’t that give me more energy to do the things I love?

Okay, let’s take a step back. When you said you’re not good at anything anymore. What do you mean?

Anything.

Do you have examples?

Cooking. I used to be an amazing cook. I used to be able to make restaurant-quality meals for people.

And now you can’t?

It’s not so much that I can’t. It’s unpredictable. Like, sometimes my food still turns out great, sometimes it’s shit, and sometimes I’m just like, I’m not cooking.

Why do you think that is?

For fuck’s sake Dave, enough with the riddles.

Ok, some people think that by unmasking, the behaviors that you’re getting rid of overlap with some of the skills that you are losing.

But, you don’t think that?

I do, it’s just that to me, a more immediate cause is you’re listening to your body.

If I’m taking care of myself, why do I have less energy?

Do you remember when you were concerned because things that didn’t bother you before the diagnosis bother you now?

They always bothered me. It’s just that I’m not ignoring them now.

… ?

But I enjoy cooking!

Always…?

There’s nothing that I enjoy always.

Do you ever cook fancy meals for yourself?

Rarely.

You do it to give people an enjoyable experience.

Oh. 💡 That was the motivation to ignore being tired.

Yeah.

I even asked myself a couple years ago if it was better to cook people a good meal or be in a good mood when they came over.

You’re just listening to your body when it’s telling you you’re tired.

Wait, but what about my hobbies. Like, I used to throw the TV on and I could spend 3,4,5 hours sculpting or painting something very intricate.

It’s one of the ways you self-regulate.

Exactly. And now that I’ve lost it, I don’t know what to do.

Maybe you didn’t lose it.

Yes, Dave, I did! That’s what I’m telling you.

No, Jeezus, maybe you do not need to self-regulate as much because you’re not killing yourself masking.

But I get so bored now. And if I’m working on finding healthier ways to be around other people I would think that I would at least want to fill some of that boredom with social things.

Would boredom want to make you hang out with a 800 pounds gorilla?

Yeah, maybe?

My point is that you have felt unsafe around most humans for your whole life. It’s perfectly natural that humans would still be a trigger.

His channel offers other thoughtful narratives. I like his style.

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Serendipitously, a series of fortuitous circumstances put me in touch with the CTO of a company in California who hired me as his mentor and coach. We’ve been at it for a few weeks and I am very happy to see him work through major obstacles with my help. Hearing him explain earlier this week how our chats have influenced him and how he is happy to share these experiences with other people in his life was incredibly validating.

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The main long-form reading from last month is this one:

David Brooks - How America Got Mean

The author argues convincingly that dropping moral education from the school curricula was the mistake that explains a lot of today’s dysfunction in US culture and politics. The article looks a bit long at first but actually covers a lot of ground and nuance, so it’s actually quite enlightening and worth a read. It also contains a powerful call to action. I found that part resonates with some of the thoughts I developed during the last year.

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Some bits and pieces about engineering management:

In The carefulness knob, Lorin Hochstein presents a short and powerful story about a powerful academic result, the Efficiency-Thoroughness Trade-Off (also called ETTO) principle: the cost to do something well increases super-linearly with how well we desire to do it.

In his talk Egoless engineering, Dan McKinley explains how to structure organizations to avoid excessive diffusion of responsibility. He shares his experimental distrust of component-based team boundaries and of project-based team boundaries. Key sentence in the presentation:

Strict division of labor feels obvious, but it is wrong, and also sucks.

He then also shares tips on how to increase collaboration and engagement and how to develop intentional values for teams.

In a related note, prolific author Ludic, whom I believe is called Nikhil Suresh, also shared Be Angry. In this thoughtful piece (albeit slightly inflammatory), he highlights how we should not accept mediocrity and how we should recognize and be optimistic about the power of coordinated endeavour instead.

In another related note, a person whose name is Steven but with an otherwise guarded identity shared, in Care Doesn’t Scale, a poignant argument that certain social needs cannot be well addressed by scalable solutions, and that we should find sustainable incentives to ensure they continue to be addressed even as technology continues to eat the world. Choice quote:

For care, though, it doesn’t get bigger and better. If your goal is to educate the world, you can look for ways to educate thousands or millions. If you want to inspire the world, the billions await. But if your goal is to care for the world, and in a given moment you’re deeply caring for one person, you’re doing the best it’s possible to do.

This article generated a healthy conversation on Hacker News, where a specific sub-thread caught my attention, with another choice quote:

[…] when the author says care “doesn’t scale”, they obviously mean “you need a one-to-one ratio of caretakers”, which I fully agree with. But what they’re also accidentally doing in the process is explaining why creating bigger teams with bigger hierarchies and structures does not appear to increase the efficiency of care.

And there is yet another sub-thread below that that reflects on incentive mismatches (often, between executives and rank-and-file) and how middle management is often in the uncomfortable position to have to reconcile the two.

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The only two things about generative AI you need to read this month are:

Addy Osmami - The 70% problem: Hard truths about AI-assisted coding

Where the author highlights that the generative AI tooling only solves 70% of real problems and that the remaining 30% require experience and knowledge. As more and more non-experienced people get access to this tooling, we will see a glut of quickly prototyped technology that only works 70% of the time, and causes major problems the rest of the time, and it will be hard to troubleshoot. His prediction is that as more people realize that, there will be a renaissance of software development as a craft, where people who deeply care about quality will become popular again.

Anshul Ramachandran - The Most Dangerous Thing An AI Startup Can Do Is Build For Other AI Startups

Where the author highlights that enterprise software has design requirements that are often unknown to people who build startups fresh out of school, or who only have experience with online B2C services, so that all the technology produced by these people (especially related to generative AI) are deeply inadequate to the real world. He dives into several of these areas with non-trivial design requirements including security, compliance, analytics, latency and scale.

Reading this made me better appreciate how my engineering degree at school did, in fact, provide me very early on with a solid intuition about those things and a high level of expectations for the products I build, and I also realized that teams I am part of or that I would form would have an edge in the market for our ability to deliver on these aspects.

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References:

• Ben Cole-Edwards, Trauma.
• Nik Bärtsch music.
• Wiebe Wakker - Plug Me In Project.
• Sprekershuys
• David Brooks - How America Got Mean.
• Lorin Hochstein - The carefulness knob.
• Erik Hollnagel - Efficiency-Thoroughness Trade-Off.
• Dan McKinley - Egoless engineering.
• Ludic - Be Angry.
• Steven - Care Doesn’t Scale.
• Addy Osmami - The 70% problem: Hard truths about AI-assisted coding.
• Anshul Ramachandran - The Most Dangerous Thing An AI Startup Can Do Is Build For Other AI Startups.