100% spot on that the external distractors are easier to manage than the internal ones. A buzzing phone, tempting social media websites, and loud rooms all tend to be relatively easy problems to fix. As for internal distractors, I feel like telling a personal story after reading this.. There are two internal distractors I've recently noticed myself struggling with:
1) A busy mind.
I often find my brain meandering on ideas or conversations completely unrelated to the work I'm trying to do. Daydreaming, imaginary arguments, and unnecessary tangents all tend to creep in (esp in the afternoon for some reason). I'm glad this post touched on Zen Buddhism and the beginner's mind. At risk of proselytizing, I have to say the best way I've found to manage a busy mind is through meditation. Consciously setting aside 10-15 minutes everyday to practice letting go of thoughts has helped build a (tiny) mental muscle which I can sometimes use to bring my focus back on the things in front of me.
2) Alcohol.
This is a bit of an external distractor, but also an internal one. In college, I was able to stay up all night drinking and coding. No longer! I find it amazing how insanely less productive I am even after a single glass of beer. I now get tired shortly afterwards and have immense difficulty focusing. Perhaps as the article mentions, the alcohol is wrapping up my ego in the task at hand. I don't have a drinking problem, but I now solve this by consciously deciding how to spend my next couple hours. "Am I going to grab a drink and take an extended break (perhaps for the rest of the day)? Or am I going to grab a water/tea and continue working?" Gone are the days when I could reliably reach the Ballmer peak (https://xkcd.com/323/).
I've found that I almost can't program anything sensible after even very small amounts of alcohol, even half a beer or 25ml of vodka is enough. It's either alcohol or programming for me. I don't drink too often, but when I do, even after large amounts I don't have hangover and I remember having memory loss only once.
One of my teammates said he thought he coded best with a slight buzz, but who knows - maybe he was just creating tech debt and vulnerabilities at scale.
For me, having one beer when coding helps because it removes my discomfort of sitting in a chair for very long. If I've been sitting for a while and coding, my mind is willing but my body is complaining about the discomfort. A bit of alcohol goes a long way to help that.
Interesting. I'm in my 50s, and I've found the Ballmer Peak to be a real thing for me ever since college. It's consistently been 2-3 beers. More than that brings a very steep dropoff in productivity, but I wonder if those 2-3 beers are de-egoing my programming. I suspect in my case they are.
For alcohol, throttling the bottles worked for me. I consume one particular day of the week instead of any random day. I consciously say no to any urges/temptations in between. This has helped me to control my habit.
For controlling distractions, other hobbies like music or something else apart from programming keeps me ticking.
For internal distractions - I agree with the post. Separate me from problem I am trying to solve.
Incredible post! I've been struggling with anxiety, depression, and a lack of motivation at work for the past year or so, and slowly coagulating towards the feeling that I needed to focus on my work.
This article feels like it gives me the how - thank you.
Big tired after an intense day, and I haven't really sat down and digested the article, but it seems close enough that I think my - admittedly primitive - tip can be of relevance.
If you get stuck, you tell yourself in whatever way you want, and honestly, some version of the following: "I don't understand this thing that is happening, but I know there is a cause. It does not happen without cause."
Honestly, it's a bit odd, and I don't know if that's the best way to express it in English. Nevertheless, several people have some back to me and told me that it has helped them.
My initial inspiration, and hypothesis is that the simple acknowledgement that I don't understand the problem, and that the problem still - despite my lack of understanding - still follow the laws of cause and effect, somehow temporarily halts our brains tendency to protect our ego at almost any cost, logic be damned.
I started trying this out after puzzling about why it's unreasonably common to figure out the answer to something only moments after you get up from your desk to go ask someone else for help, even when you might have worked with it for hours. It had to have a reason, although I don't know exactly what it is!
> I started trying this out after puzzling about why it's unreasonably common to figure out the answer to something only moments after you get up from your desk to go ask someone else for help, even when you might have worked with it for hours. It had to have a reason, although I don't know exactly what it is!
Well you've heard the advice on looking at a problem from a different point of view, right? Usually this is intended in the sense of changing the context or reframing the problem, and it works, but takes effort because we all have our default go-to mental models. But it turns out that changing the mode of your thinking (eg. visual vs. kinesthetic, etc.) is just as helpful, and the act of trying to phrase the problem verbally is usually just different enough from just thinking about it (I believe even if you are mostly a verbal thinker) to do the same trick.
Hence "rubber duck debugging" where you solve the problem by describing it to a rubber duck rather than another human.
> If you get stuck, you tell yourself in whatever way you want, and honestly, some version of the following: "I don't understand this thing that is happening, but I know there is a cause. It does not happen without cause."
Seconding this, a quote I have from a past computer science teacher of mine is: "Someone with a brain wrote this code, so you - as someone with a brain - can understand it". Definitely helps me when I'm really stuck on a problem.
I feel like for me, reading and writing articles like this are a major source of distractions. I often find myself reading articles like this, lessons of self-improvement and tips of motivation and ways to be a better programmer, instead of doing what actually makes me a better programmer (actually programming). To extend upon the article, I feel like one of the easiest distractions from self improvement is constantly reading about self improvement. Not to say that the lessons in these articles are a sham, but that there's a point where the idea of and dream of improving yourself becomes a dangerously stealthy distraction.
The thing about working on yourself is that it’s actually work. Reading an article, or a book on behaviour, self-improvement and what else doesn’t actually change you any more than reading Harry Potter does.
It’s the years of applying Zen Buddhism, scheduling your chores or staring at the mirror telling yourself you’re a great person that changes you.
I know because I recently recorded from a major depression and anxiety, and everything that I’ve done that has actually helped, like lying to myself in the mirror, or convincing myself no-one on the train was actually judging me, took 6+ months to have a real lasting effect.
It’s the same with distractions. Just look at your screen time spent on your smartphone today. It’s probably a couple of hours by the time you go to bed. Like it is for the rest of us. Most of that time is frankly wasted, you know it. I know it. But reading a self-improvement article about how cutting down screen time is healthy for us isn’t actually going to change our behaviour one bit. Maybe for a day or two, but not next week and certainly not next month.
My view is the opposite, basically the adage “measure twice, cut once.”
Work without research often is actively harmful in addition to failing and wasting time & resources. Research at least improves knowledge while not wasting other resources besides time.
However, I felt the context of this conversation was self-improvement though. In this particular context, it's easier to get things done without reading any motivational books/articles (in fact, most people get things done without reading about how to self motivate), and the contrary -- reading self-improvement articles -- doesn't mean anything if you don't do the actual work.
Let me quote the initial post of this subthread, which is the sentiment I agree with:
> "The thing about working on yourself is that it’s actually work. Reading an article, or a book on behaviour, self-improvement and what else doesn’t actually change you any more than reading Harry Potter does."
"The thing about working on yourself is that it’s actually work. Reading an article, or a book on behaviour, self-improvement and what else doesn’t actually change you any more than reading Harry Potter does."
This is well put, and I think part of the reason so much self-improvement material is drivel. Generally, I've noticed that some of the most pathological people are the most into 'self-improvement' as an idea. That being said, their brand of 'self-improvement' generally does not extend beyond reading and quoting books by various gurus.
On the flip-side, those I've met who are actually highly motivated and disciplined, have never picked up one of those guru books.
Reading up on something is one thing, and in many cases, it's an important first step. There's no way to start using a new language without reading something. That being said, simply reading is not enough. On top of that, what you read has to be actionable. The self-improvement platitudes are not actionable. Reading a book on Python does not turn you into a python developer. Why should reading a guru book turn you into one?
Programming isn't necessarily the best way to get better at programming, there are a bunch of related skills that also need to be improved. Thinking about how you program and behave as a human will unlock many doors
Programming is certainly the best way to get better at programming. Some other things may help improve your ability to program, but there is no substitute for the act itself.
Nah, I am agreement with the poster that you replied to.
Our tech lead is a bit of a diva. He is smart but basically he just programs and doesn't bother with much else. He bangs out code quickly, but it can be buggy and its usually the rest of the team that fix the bugs, keep the infrastructure running, write the tests. He is good at tricky algorithmic stuff. His code is fairly well organised. I don't find his abstractions particularly good. The REST API he created is terrible (poor abstraction) and not RESTful a lot of it uses POST requests, 200 success contains errors. No tests. Terrible at explaining his work to other people. Poor at listening.
Give me a good team player with average ability over a good programmer that lacks the other skills any day.
Agree absolutely. I think real problem is our interview process. More focus is given on solving tricky questions than overall craft. In day to day tasks, how many times you have to implement those algorithms ? (I am not against knowing algorithms though). Good code is which performs requirement perfectly and MAINTAINABLE.
Python's PEP 20/zen of python is one of the best guide for craft, imo. It works well for individual programmer as well as for teams.
Programming -with intent- is the best way to get better.
If I code up a 10k LOC main.cpp with stringly typed data structures, I'm not really better at programming, am I?
It's like that saying: practice doesn't make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect.
Programming is not literally just typing, as we all know, nor is it simply getting a Thing to compile. A lot of it is educating oneself on different types of data structures, algorithms, math, architectural practices, and so on. Expanding our workbench of tools, as it were.
And -then- putting that into practice when actually programming.
I'm not good at Rust merely because I've worked with Rust a lot; I've also read books on Rust, and I've read many web articles on Rust (found from Rust Weekly) and various libraries, etc.
An unresolved mental dilemma is a part of a lot of my worry and inaction.
Basically it goes: If you just keep working, will you always keep making progress towards where you want to be?
I don't necessarily mean "if you just put in the effort then you'll succeed," which I do not believe in. People talk about "practice with purpose." You have to know the parts that you need to improve on and correct them if your actual intention is to get better at something. I believe that works better than taking any arbitrary action at all, with the same goal in mind.
So it's not knowing if writing that 10K LoC program actually does help or not. I forget things I've done. I lose interest.
Then I extrapolate from this and think, then there must be some spectrum of things in between that are not practically useful, and if I keep doing them then I will not improve in the ways that I want. I will believe that maybe writing a stringly typed C++ application is just reinforcing bad habits that I will have to expend extra effort to undo later. I then believe if that's the case then I ought to not do that thing at all if I believe it's just going to hinder my progress.
The problem is that this mindset costs me a lot of my action, because I figure if what I'm doing is not beneficial for my skills then I'd better get something else. A lot of the time that "something else" is something less challenging, all the way to nothing productive at all. So I end up believing I'm just coddling myself in an attempt to avoid "wasting time" not really improving.
I think this kind of fallacy stems from a fear of banging my head into a wall expecting to get better at some point without knowing if I'm actually on the right track. At least if someone knowledgeable teaches you they could suggest so. And that fear stems from placing too much value on intellectual success as opposed to enjoying the process. If you only enjoy something on the condition you improve, then it discourages you. I've been discouraged a lot.
It could also be due to divorcing enjoyment of something from improving at it. I simply always care about improving, and if I don't see improvement then I'll lose interest. But some say that people who enjoy things just improve on the basis of doing it at all. I just can't seem to get myself to believe it, though.
1. For each activity that you want to improve in know exactly why you want to improve. If it’s because you hope it’ll be fun later but it’s not fun now you should probably stop. There will be a time it’s less fun than it was in the beginning and you’ll give up then anyway. If it’s to get to do something different on the other side, stop expecting enjoyment and just pay the price.
2. Bias towards action. If you want to start running, just go run. Don’t read about it. Don’t sign up for a race. Don’t buy better shoes. Just go run for a while (or write some code or say all the Spanish words you already know out loud).
3. Spend 10-20% of your training time (do not go outside of this range) on improving your training. This is when you watch that video about your activity. People naturally gravitate towards 0 or 100% of time in planning. “A little bit” is the best but rarely done.
4. Check in with someone better than you on a regular schedule to make sure your training is progressing well. Weekly is very good. This could be a coach, mentor, partner, something like that (not an accountability buddy).
Wholeheartedly agree. Programming is a vague term anyway. Speaking from experience, I could only code basic JavaScript with almost 0 understanding of the more complex fundamentals, but actually build functional SPAs. Repeat that a few years and I've only gotten better at creating apps via programming, but learned little in terms of fundamentals - and so trying to parse some debate on JavaScript would end up going over my head every time.
Once you've read enough philosophy and psychology (both academic and pop), articles like this start becoming repetitive. You realize Jean Beaudrillard was right, and in the post-modern world there truly is nothing new under the sun, everything is just a variation of a variation of a variation of something that came before. A better use of your (professional development) time is thinking about and writing actual code.
“The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato” - Alfred North Whitehead
It's ironic that the one of the best forms of self improvement is to get over yourself, while the act of self improvement is often entirely self focused.
I think, though, that the author makes a really valuable core point: Most challenges are hard not because of the subject but because of our approach and perspectives. I can't think of anything important in life that doesn't benefit from the exploration of metacognition.
Applying self-improvement takes time, work and effort.
You are applying it when you change as a result of reading and specially using what you learn. Change is essential, if you do not change anything you are not using it.
It is easier to just (passively) read something than applying it. The problem with reading(or watching videos) is that it can be used as an excuse for procrastination as it is way easier doing something passive that active.
The most interesting thing is that the problem is not in reading. I worked with a kid whose parents were worried as he used videogames to procastinate. They put the console out of the kid's reach and now the kid will just stare at the wall for hours just daydreamming.
So my advice is for you to start applying what one book about procastination says. Select just one good book and start applying it on your life.
It is very important that you just decide and pick one. I don't know "The Now habit" for example.
Write down in a journal the difficulties you face, your emotions while doing so and work over it consistently.
this is a great blog. i don't think it would have really made sense or resonated with me if i hadn't been in therapy the last year or so almost exclusively working on this. which is what i want to really endorse if you're someone curious or in pain. there's ways to work on it.
This post did not reach the conclusion I was expecting based on the title. For me, I think I've largely experienced the opposite relationship between ego and my programming productivity.
Learning to program as a kid was probably one of the most exciting developments in my life up to that point, and I expect that's true for many people on this forum. I originally attributed this to programming's usefulness, and the mathematical beauty of watching all the pieces fall into place when solving a problem. And those were surely both important motivators, but, looking back, the primary motivator was the pure power trip of it. Programming is extremely powerful (software is eating the world, after all), and I could immediately sense that, and that power was the biggest high I got from it.
Throughout my teens and twenties, I didn't really consider this, and just followed the high, and it led me to develop skills and a successful career as a programmer. For me, it was a positive feedback loop, where the more I put into programming, the better I got, and the bigger the ego boost. Unfortunately, though unsurprisingly, it got to a point where my inflated ego started getting in the way of my personal relationships, and even my self perception. I considered myself a great programmer, but not a very good person. I became quite self-loathing for many years, but I've noticed that's healed up after moving away from programming as a primary job responsibility, and my personal relationships have benefited, too.
I still love programming for the beauty of it, and I still dive into little personal programming projects a few times a year. Part of me wishes I did so more often, but I'm held back because the only way I've found to get through a project of any duration longer than a few days is to basically develop delusions of grandeur about it. Programming is fun and beautiful, but very hard, too, and somehow without the promise of the conference talk, or the influential git repo coming out of it, there's just too much friction. So, more often than not, these days, I simply don't bother. I guess with my current middle-aged testosterone levels, I'd rather keep my family and friends than be king of the world.
(That said, if anyone out there finds this relatable, but has been able to push through and develop a healthier, less ego-reliant, relationship with programming, I'd live to hear about it!)
Before getting into programming, I was a somewhat accomplished guitar player. By the time I was 20, I had played in a bunch of bands, recorded several albums, and gone on tour. As a result of these early successes, I developed a big ego about myself as a musician.
I realize now that the main thing driving my musical career was that ego. I enjoyed playing, but getting better at my craft was not my primary driver. Instead, it was that I wanted to be famous and rich and noteworthy and desirable. For me, playing guitar was inexorably linked with becoming a certain kind of person and gaining status.
Now any time I pick the guitar back up for more than a day or two, I quickly get lost in delusions of grandeur. I start thinking about how I'm going to change my whole lifestyle to "be a great guitar player" and playing itself takes the back seat to fantasizing about gaining power and status. Try as I might I can't just casually play guitar for its own sake—kind of like how you have trouble programming without the promise of a conference talk or an influential git repo coming out of it.
For me the solution has been to avoid playing music, and to focus on programming (and my family/friends) instead. I think the groove of ego I carved out as a guitarist is just too deep to allow me a healthier relationship to music. As a programmer, I don't have that same narcissistic false-self to live up to. I just enjoy it and want to get better because it's fun.
Maybe the solution for you could be to take up a creative pursuit other than programming?
I feel that to be something that resonates with me. I started as self thought freelancer loved the symphony of creation and the end product you make. Then I got myself a job I had sucha enthusiasm and thirst for knowledge, I would go above and beyond. Then I burned out, the cycle has repeated couple of times now forcing me to take breaks in 7-8months. One thing I realised I still love creating stuff, but it's all too painful to do it for someone else. The major contributor to it is constantly changing of requirements, sometimes goals altogether scrapping of projects you put lot of brain power in and finally sometimes fighting against the tide. I have experienced people who are just there in the middle management adding unnecessary layer of red tape and doing anything to survive. I feel I'm done with it. I have picked some other stuff, currently searching for something other than a programming job, it's a risk because majority of my work has been programming, other than a failed startup. But I think I will take the risk of exploring.
So, I've not really had that set of things, but when I went through a phase of working in fast food, that was helpful for helping me disentangle who I was from my ability to work as a software developer.
I suspect that sort of thing won't be much help to you, however, because for me, my motivations have been relational more than power-based.
That, and I find enough joy from programming just from the utility of things I've worked on, rather than needing it to be a vehicle for influence.
Still, I'm very interested to see where things go for you.
Software developer jobs pay so well, many programmers don't know what to do other than that. I feel need of disengagement with laptop so many times but damn I don't know any other thing to pay bills. Also there is always fear of losing track of new tech and being jobless.
> My ego creates a tight bond between my work and my identity. Linking my self worth to how well I do my job.
Same experience here, and probably for a lot of devs. It took a good 10 years or so to break out of this. If I couldn't get something working that I expected to work, I silently took it out on myself. Must not be good/smart enough. And so I'd beat my head against the wall. Once I started letting broken code or an unfixed bug wait until the next day and saw that the sky didn't fall, and that I could eventually fix the issue, I started to trust myself more, and just let things be. Some days, everything works. Some days, nothing works. Your build fails and you spend hours updating some obscure library, and you don't get feature X done that day. It's really your decision whether or not you let this effect how you feel.
This is so critical and so easy to forget. Every day is an effort to remind oneself of these basic truths.
“Whenever distress or displeasure arises in your mind, remind yourself, “This is only my interpretation, not reality itself.” Then ask whether it falls within or outside your sphere of power. And, if it is beyond your power to control, let it go.”
― Epictetus
I love the introspection and positive attitude in this post.
One thing I would add is that intrinsic motivation seems to be framed and activated very differently depending on one's personality. I find myself performing best when I'm on the edge of failure, trying to catch up to the high performers, and when recalling past times when I overcame failure or adversity. Comparing myself to the group described as demotivating in the post is the best motivator for me. And then there are little tweaks to one's environment (for me it's coffee, exercise, occasional travel, specific movies and music) that I find end up making an enormous difference in motivation, focus, and overall mental state. I suspect this has a lot to do with personal physiology and the environment in which you grew up.
With that caveat, the post is incredibly thoughtful and helpful, and I really enjoyed reading it.
"This is ego distraction. It’s about putting off uncertainty till later to buy temporary relief. To protect our ego from a perceived threat. Things like hard problems, the possibility of failing publicly, or negative feedback all become threats when they’re linked to my identity."
I disagree with this [at least for me personally]. Being a good programmer is just straight up not something that's part of my identity. There's millions of people who are much, much better at it then me, and that's totally fine.
The reason that it's hard to work on hard problems is because they're hard! Sometimes, programming can be a really difficult or a slog of an activity. It's same with mastering any skill. Learning to play guitar, becoming an Olympic athlete, whatever. You can't Zen Buddhism your way out of the fact that you're going to spending years and years practicing until your fingers bleed, or until you're completely exhausted, etc.
> You can't Zen Buddhism your way out of the fact that you're going to spending years and years practicing until your fingers bleed, or until you're completely exhausted, etc.
Many Zen Buddhists know how long and hard practice for mastery is. Practicing meditation is in many ways skill acquisition as well, which is why it is called a practice.
You’ll of course be spending years and years practicing programming, and the insight that ego identification gets in the way and one must practice beginners mind is a simple yet deep understanding that comes from years and years of practice.
> You’ll of course be spending years and years practicing programming
You can't just 'of course' this! I mean, you can, but that's the whole point. If you, or anyone reading this enough cares enough about being a great programmer, you wouldn't be on this site in the first place. Which is fine, I enjoy wasting time on here as much as anyone. But the people who are actually really good at programming? They're not reading blogs about ego. They're not writing blogs about ego. They're programming.
Look at what Fabrice Bellard has accomplished in the last 20 or so years: https://bellard.org/ . QEMU, FFMPEG. I will never even be close to the level that he is. I'm much closer in relative skill to the person who just wrote their first hello world yesterday, and I've been programming for 15 years or so. And that's totally fine with me. Programming is not my only interest in life.
For the blog author, it seems that they're searching for a reason that they're not as good at programming as they think should be. I mean, he's already a Staff Engineer at Circle CI. He's not someone who's been programming for a year. It's very possible that's he pretty close to being as good as he'll ever be. Sure, he'll keep improving, but he'll never be Fabrice Bellard. If he was, he already would be and wouldn't be writing a blog about why he's not.
So what I would say to him is: that's fine! Life is not just programming. "The Second Truth is that this suffering is caused by selfish craving and personal desire." You wrote an article about how your ego gets in the way of you becoming a better programmer, but its your ego that makes you want to be a better programmer in the first place!
> I disagree with this [at least for me personally]. Being a good programmer is just straight up not something that's part of my identity. There's millions of people who are much, much better at it then me, and that's totally fine.
Then why did you call yourself "good", why not just a programmer? ;-)
> It's same with mastering any skill. Learning to play guitar, becoming an Olympic athlete, whatever. You can't Zen Buddhism your way out of the fact that you're going to spending years and years practicing until your fingers bleed, or until you're completely exhausted, etc.
The point of the article isn't that there is a shortcut around having to put in the time, it is that ego sabotages your efforts to put in the time, and if you're somehow coerced into spending the time anyway can prevent you from receiving the expected benefit (eg. just staring at the code on the screen probably won't help, unless the problem is literally a typo).
>it is that ego sabotages your efforts to put in the time
Sure, but what I'm saying that that statement is almost meaningless in the grand scheme of things. Is not letting your ego get in the way a necessary part of getting to mastery? Absolutely. But no matter how much you change your thought process, or analyze the problem, you still need to eat the proverbial whale.
Think of all the people who've ever played basketball and have had any aspirations of joining the NBA. For the vast, vast majority of them, they just were never going to be good enough. They didn't have the talent. It didn't matter how much they practiced, how much they got their ego out of the way, how badly they wanted it. Only about 3,000 people have ever played in the NBA.
Now, I'm not saying you need to be in the NBA to be a "successful" basketball player, or whatever you want to call the equivalent of that for programming. What I'm saying is that everyone has ceilings for how good they can become at something. Maybe on the relative scale, the best you can ever be is a pretty good programmer, and that's it. No shame in that!
After all, part of Zen Budhism is accepting who you are and your limitations.
> After all, part of Zen Budhism is accepting who you are and your limitations.
The teaching is that all beings are capable of enlightenment and outlines a path to accomplish that. The concept of "you" is part of the problem and meditation on sunyata can offer insight to that.
So, one part of my brain is an adult another part is a child acting from beneath the consciousness.
Then most of these articles usually say the recipe is to have the adult very closely observe the child and hit it with a stick any time it wanders of the "desired" path.
No.
How do you expect it to work between a real parent and a real child? I think it would fail miserably and annoy both sides. I'd suggest coming up with some nasty parental tricks instead. Also adjust them after some time, because they do tend to stop working.
I found this quote from the article quite motivating:
> “I cannot say this too strongly: Do not compare yourselves to others. Be true to who you are, and continue to learn with all your might.” ― Daisaku Ikeda, Discussions on Youth
A great book where the last quote in this post pulls from is Suzuki’s “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind”. [1]
I often find the solution to many of my problems is to go back and practice from this mindset. I coincidentally went back and reread selections from this book a couple weeks ago, as I found my ego had been creeping into many facets of my life recently and I needed to go back and be reminded to practice with this mindset.
In my experience, the best way to insulate yourself from the pangs of imposter syndrome and unproductive self-doubt is with experience of past successes.
Early in my software engineering career I would constantly and painfully wonder if I was actually capable of fixing a certain bug or solving a new or difficult problem. But then after working hard on a solution, 99% of the time it would work out. After going through this process of debilitating self-doubt and eventual success over the course of years, it has become much more manageable.
I still sometimes panic when initially faced with a very difficult programming problem, but I can put those fears to rest much more easily by saying, "ok, I've solved hard problems before. I may not know how to solve this particular problem yet, but I feel confident that I will be able to figure it out just like I did in the past with difficult problems X, Y and Z."
At the risk of sounding pedantic, part of leaving the beginner phase — and the true value of experience — is developing a kind of armor against those feelings of inadequacy (of course you don't want this to go too far into feelings of overconfidence or an inability to reflect when things do go wrong).
I also think it's the responsibility of more senior engineers to recognize when a more junior teammate might be having those self-doubts and be empathetic while helping them build up their own successes.
> I still sometimes panic when initially faced with a very difficult programming problem, but I can put those fears to rest much more easily by saying, "ok, I've solved hard problems before. I may not know how to solve this particular problem yet, but I feel confident that I will be able to figure it out just like I did in the past with difficult problems X, Y and Z."
The following this just my experience, but it's a bit of an odd one! So I thought I'd share for fun :)
I have this too and I only have 1 year of work experience.
What helped for me doing a course where I needed to know:
- C
- X86
beforehand.
The course was about analyzing binaries and malware. I didn't know any C and almost no x86. I did the course as a challenge, but it to date has been the most difficult programming challenge of my life. Teaching yourself 2 prerequisites while following a normal course load at the same time, while feeling insecure and have a strong suspicion to not be intelligent enough was tough, for me.
I've worked at 3 companies in that little 1 year of experience (2 times as a freelancer) and it hasn't come close yet. I'm hoping where it finally gets tougher, but I've heard from people who actually are experienced full-stack devs for 4+ years that that course was way harder than anything they have ever done.
So long story short: do super hard courses. If they're not the hardest courses of your life, then it isn't hard enough.
Self-doubt is just as human as fear, anxiety, or loneliness. It helps when there's some social environment that helps counteract these bouts. By the same token, if the existing environment works to enforce these demotivating feelings, then one needs to acknowledge that it maybe "them", not you, and either build some mental defences or just move on.
Everyone one on the team should be allowed to make mistakes or take bad choices. Juniors, seniors, managers... we are all people, we're all engineers, we're a team! Cult of perfection is limiting to everyone. The manager's job is to recognize everyone's contribution, no matter how small.
Too often, the teams project a higher bar than is actually reachable. Sure it will lead to sense of inadequacy, for absolutely baseless reasons.
I have my best coding sessions after I start the day with fifteen minutes to half an hour of mindfulness meditation. That calms my mind, makes me „less anxious“, lets me go into new directions without feeling the urge to walk away, procrastinate, do something else.
I read this, and I have also read "The Practicing Mind" which is exactly what this post is about. My issue isn't in understanding the premise. It all makes sense, and I get a sense of "ah hah!" every time I read it (I've read it twice).
The issue for me is that I really struggle to turn this theory in to effective practice. Each time after reading "The Practicing Mind" I have tried to cognitively remind myself whenever I was frustrated, to stop and look at the problem as a beginner would, to drop my ego, etc.
The problem is that it would sort of help, temporarily. I'd find myself a little bit better at getting a solid day of work done, but not dramatically better. After a week or so, I'd forget to even do the exercises, and I'd be back to struggling.
What honestly helps more than anything, the "magic bullet" really is pharmacology (aderall). For me, it somehow calms me down. I don't feel more energy, I feel tranquil, and able to let defeat roll off my shoulders.
Sadly, taking aderall is not a sustainable solution. Amphetamine is a neurotoxin which raises blood pressure. Not to mention, I don't like being "tranquil" for anything other than my work. I like my 'normal' state of semi-uncontrolled energy, which is great for exercising and video games. I'd like to be able to turn this feeling on or off, and taking a medication doesn't allow for this.
So I tend to see saw between three states... 1) Struggling at work, barely getting by, quality of life sucks. 2) On medication, happy at work, feeling productive and peaceful, but desire to get off medication 3) Off medication, using "Beginners Mind" but find my ability to implement it in a way that is strongly effective, absent.
Funny you mention Adderall, as I just took one today to help be more productive after a long, exhaustive weekend out of town. I totally agree what you say about how it affects work in a positive way, but that it isn't a sustainable solution. I believe the key is moderation. I won't allow myself to use one more than once a week at most, which I feel does a good job of keeping any sort of psychological dependence on it away, minimizes the negative physical repercussions it could cause, and to keep the feeling fresh.
I'm guessing that you've already heard this from like 10 people, but have you experimented with a lower dose or other ADD meds? I have heard that methylphenidate and vyvanse have weaker effects on mood while still helping calm down distractions. Their effect is bit less noticeable in general.
Thanks for sharing this perspective! I know exactly what you're talking about. I wrote this piece and have to admit that even for me I have days when I struggle to bring this attitude to a problem or a day. I guess it's one of those hard habits to break.
What helps for me the most is intentionality. To literally set my intention for a day or for a problem right before I jump in. So if I know I'm about to jump into a tricky problem I literally take a few seconds to remind myself of the attitude I want to bring and even exactly what I want to focus on.
So this would be things like "Don't try to judge difficulty (easy/hard), just go wherever it takes me" or "Don't be afraid of the amount of work". One that super helpful for me is deliberately separating to "understanding" part of a problem from the "solving" - so i'd tell myself "I'm just trying to understand what's going on right now - solve later". Etc etc.
I can relate to the parallels between programming, and athletics. I like to consider myself an athlete, and if there is one thing I have learned about sports it's that the process of falling from the top to the middle of the pack can happen in a week despite that it can take years to get from the middle of the pack to the top.
So when the author was talking about how being an expert is really just a matter of become a great student I was quickly reminded of my golf game. Where I often time find myself with the lowest handicap I have ever had without actually feeling like I am improving. I shave a stroke one day. Then another.. and another, and before I know it I am a 3 instead of a 10.
That being said, I wouldn't say I have an ego problem in coding myself because tbh I have always felt like a bit of an imposter. I think my imposter syndrome has actually ended up being a good thing over time in my career as a programmer. It seems to have kept me grounded, and as the author suggested is a good thing, it seems to have kept me in the forever a student mentality.
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[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 202 ms ] thread100% spot on that the external distractors are easier to manage than the internal ones. A buzzing phone, tempting social media websites, and loud rooms all tend to be relatively easy problems to fix. As for internal distractors, I feel like telling a personal story after reading this.. There are two internal distractors I've recently noticed myself struggling with:
1) A busy mind.
I often find my brain meandering on ideas or conversations completely unrelated to the work I'm trying to do. Daydreaming, imaginary arguments, and unnecessary tangents all tend to creep in (esp in the afternoon for some reason). I'm glad this post touched on Zen Buddhism and the beginner's mind. At risk of proselytizing, I have to say the best way I've found to manage a busy mind is through meditation. Consciously setting aside 10-15 minutes everyday to practice letting go of thoughts has helped build a (tiny) mental muscle which I can sometimes use to bring my focus back on the things in front of me.
2) Alcohol.
This is a bit of an external distractor, but also an internal one. In college, I was able to stay up all night drinking and coding. No longer! I find it amazing how insanely less productive I am even after a single glass of beer. I now get tired shortly afterwards and have immense difficulty focusing. Perhaps as the article mentions, the alcohol is wrapping up my ego in the task at hand. I don't have a drinking problem, but I now solve this by consciously deciding how to spend my next couple hours. "Am I going to grab a drink and take an extended break (perhaps for the rest of the day)? Or am I going to grab a water/tea and continue working?" Gone are the days when I could reliably reach the Ballmer peak (https://xkcd.com/323/).
I've found that I almost can't program anything sensible after even very small amounts of alcohol, even half a beer or 25ml of vodka is enough. It's either alcohol or programming for me. I don't drink too often, but when I do, even after large amounts I don't have hangover and I remember having memory loss only once.
For controlling distractions, other hobbies like music or something else apart from programming keeps me ticking.
For internal distractions - I agree with the post. Separate me from problem I am trying to solve.
And then
> 2) Alcohol
Have you had your B12 levels checked? You might want to try a supplement.
This article feels like it gives me the how - thank you.
Don't be put off by the title, it's a wonderful read no matter if you think you're gifted or not.
I read that book this year.
It definitely contributed towards resolving some unresolved childhood trauma, and I'm grateful for it, but it was no walk in the park.
My counter point was that while I enjoyed the book's results, the read/process was the polar opposite of wonderful.
I felt my anecdata might be helpful to those who might pick up the book.
If you get stuck, you tell yourself in whatever way you want, and honestly, some version of the following: "I don't understand this thing that is happening, but I know there is a cause. It does not happen without cause."
Honestly, it's a bit odd, and I don't know if that's the best way to express it in English. Nevertheless, several people have some back to me and told me that it has helped them.
My initial inspiration, and hypothesis is that the simple acknowledgement that I don't understand the problem, and that the problem still - despite my lack of understanding - still follow the laws of cause and effect, somehow temporarily halts our brains tendency to protect our ego at almost any cost, logic be damned.
I started trying this out after puzzling about why it's unreasonably common to figure out the answer to something only moments after you get up from your desk to go ask someone else for help, even when you might have worked with it for hours. It had to have a reason, although I don't know exactly what it is!
Well you've heard the advice on looking at a problem from a different point of view, right? Usually this is intended in the sense of changing the context or reframing the problem, and it works, but takes effort because we all have our default go-to mental models. But it turns out that changing the mode of your thinking (eg. visual vs. kinesthetic, etc.) is just as helpful, and the act of trying to phrase the problem verbally is usually just different enough from just thinking about it (I believe even if you are mostly a verbal thinker) to do the same trick.
Hence "rubber duck debugging" where you solve the problem by describing it to a rubber duck rather than another human.
Seconding this, a quote I have from a past computer science teacher of mine is: "Someone with a brain wrote this code, so you - as someone with a brain - can understand it". Definitely helps me when I'm really stuck on a problem.
Every effect has a cause, and when debugging your job is to know your codebase well enough to be able to quickly pinpoint that cause.
It’s the years of applying Zen Buddhism, scheduling your chores or staring at the mirror telling yourself you’re a great person that changes you.
I know because I recently recorded from a major depression and anxiety, and everything that I’ve done that has actually helped, like lying to myself in the mirror, or convincing myself no-one on the train was actually judging me, took 6+ months to have a real lasting effect.
It’s the same with distractions. Just look at your screen time spent on your smartphone today. It’s probably a couple of hours by the time you go to bed. Like it is for the rest of us. Most of that time is frankly wasted, you know it. I know it. But reading a self-improvement article about how cutting down screen time is healthy for us isn’t actually going to change our behaviour one bit. Maybe for a day or two, but not next week and certainly not next month.
Work without reading about it: might work, and often does. Reading about it without doing the work: way less useful.
I wouldn't try it with lab work, though pioneering work sometimes was that way ;)
Work without research often is actively harmful in addition to failing and wasting time & resources. Research at least improves knowledge while not wasting other resources besides time.
However, I felt the context of this conversation was self-improvement though. In this particular context, it's easier to get things done without reading any motivational books/articles (in fact, most people get things done without reading about how to self motivate), and the contrary -- reading self-improvement articles -- doesn't mean anything if you don't do the actual work.
Let me quote the initial post of this subthread, which is the sentiment I agree with:
> "The thing about working on yourself is that it’s actually work. Reading an article, or a book on behaviour, self-improvement and what else doesn’t actually change you any more than reading Harry Potter does."
This is well put, and I think part of the reason so much self-improvement material is drivel. Generally, I've noticed that some of the most pathological people are the most into 'self-improvement' as an idea. That being said, their brand of 'self-improvement' generally does not extend beyond reading and quoting books by various gurus.
On the flip-side, those I've met who are actually highly motivated and disciplined, have never picked up one of those guru books.
Reading up on something is one thing, and in many cases, it's an important first step. There's no way to start using a new language without reading something. That being said, simply reading is not enough. On top of that, what you read has to be actionable. The self-improvement platitudes are not actionable. Reading a book on Python does not turn you into a python developer. Why should reading a guru book turn you into one?
I've noticed that some of the people who spend the most time paying attention to their blood sugar are diabetic.
Our tech lead is a bit of a diva. He is smart but basically he just programs and doesn't bother with much else. He bangs out code quickly, but it can be buggy and its usually the rest of the team that fix the bugs, keep the infrastructure running, write the tests. He is good at tricky algorithmic stuff. His code is fairly well organised. I don't find his abstractions particularly good. The REST API he created is terrible (poor abstraction) and not RESTful a lot of it uses POST requests, 200 success contains errors. No tests. Terrible at explaining his work to other people. Poor at listening.
Give me a good team player with average ability over a good programmer that lacks the other skills any day.
Python's PEP 20/zen of python is one of the best guide for craft, imo. It works well for individual programmer as well as for teams.
https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0020/
Programming -with intent- is the best way to get better.
If I code up a 10k LOC main.cpp with stringly typed data structures, I'm not really better at programming, am I?
It's like that saying: practice doesn't make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect.
Programming is not literally just typing, as we all know, nor is it simply getting a Thing to compile. A lot of it is educating oneself on different types of data structures, algorithms, math, architectural practices, and so on. Expanding our workbench of tools, as it were.
And -then- putting that into practice when actually programming.
I'm not good at Rust merely because I've worked with Rust a lot; I've also read books on Rust, and I've read many web articles on Rust (found from Rust Weekly) and various libraries, etc.
I think you are, you are better having done that than before. It might not have been the best improvement you could have gotten out of it, but still.
The relevant XKCD is this one: https://xkcd.com/1414/
Basically it goes: If you just keep working, will you always keep making progress towards where you want to be?
I don't necessarily mean "if you just put in the effort then you'll succeed," which I do not believe in. People talk about "practice with purpose." You have to know the parts that you need to improve on and correct them if your actual intention is to get better at something. I believe that works better than taking any arbitrary action at all, with the same goal in mind.
So it's not knowing if writing that 10K LoC program actually does help or not. I forget things I've done. I lose interest.
Then I extrapolate from this and think, then there must be some spectrum of things in between that are not practically useful, and if I keep doing them then I will not improve in the ways that I want. I will believe that maybe writing a stringly typed C++ application is just reinforcing bad habits that I will have to expend extra effort to undo later. I then believe if that's the case then I ought to not do that thing at all if I believe it's just going to hinder my progress.
The problem is that this mindset costs me a lot of my action, because I figure if what I'm doing is not beneficial for my skills then I'd better get something else. A lot of the time that "something else" is something less challenging, all the way to nothing productive at all. So I end up believing I'm just coddling myself in an attempt to avoid "wasting time" not really improving.
I think this kind of fallacy stems from a fear of banging my head into a wall expecting to get better at some point without knowing if I'm actually on the right track. At least if someone knowledgeable teaches you they could suggest so. And that fear stems from placing too much value on intellectual success as opposed to enjoying the process. If you only enjoy something on the condition you improve, then it discourages you. I've been discouraged a lot.
It could also be due to divorcing enjoyment of something from improving at it. I simply always care about improving, and if I don't see improvement then I'll lose interest. But some say that people who enjoy things just improve on the basis of doing it at all. I just can't seem to get myself to believe it, though.
2. Bias towards action. If you want to start running, just go run. Don’t read about it. Don’t sign up for a race. Don’t buy better shoes. Just go run for a while (or write some code or say all the Spanish words you already know out loud).
3. Spend 10-20% of your training time (do not go outside of this range) on improving your training. This is when you watch that video about your activity. People naturally gravitate towards 0 or 100% of time in planning. “A little bit” is the best but rarely done.
4. Check in with someone better than you on a regular schedule to make sure your training is progressing well. Weekly is very good. This could be a coach, mentor, partner, something like that (not an accountability buddy).
It's because we lack confidence in knowing if our system of improvement is going to work and we don't want to waste time.
I think you kind of need to Let Go and enjoy exploring or maybe just take structured online classes that you pay for.
I think, though, that the author makes a really valuable core point: Most challenges are hard not because of the subject but because of our approach and perspectives. I can't think of anything important in life that doesn't benefit from the exploration of metacognition.
You are applying it when you change as a result of reading and specially using what you learn. Change is essential, if you do not change anything you are not using it.
It is easier to just (passively) read something than applying it. The problem with reading(or watching videos) is that it can be used as an excuse for procrastination as it is way easier doing something passive that active.
The most interesting thing is that the problem is not in reading. I worked with a kid whose parents were worried as he used videogames to procastinate. They put the console out of the kid's reach and now the kid will just stare at the wall for hours just daydreamming.
So my advice is for you to start applying what one book about procastination says. Select just one good book and start applying it on your life.
It is very important that you just decide and pick one. I don't know "The Now habit" for example.
Write down in a journal the difficulties you face, your emotions while doing so and work over it consistently.
yup
Learning to program as a kid was probably one of the most exciting developments in my life up to that point, and I expect that's true for many people on this forum. I originally attributed this to programming's usefulness, and the mathematical beauty of watching all the pieces fall into place when solving a problem. And those were surely both important motivators, but, looking back, the primary motivator was the pure power trip of it. Programming is extremely powerful (software is eating the world, after all), and I could immediately sense that, and that power was the biggest high I got from it.
Throughout my teens and twenties, I didn't really consider this, and just followed the high, and it led me to develop skills and a successful career as a programmer. For me, it was a positive feedback loop, where the more I put into programming, the better I got, and the bigger the ego boost. Unfortunately, though unsurprisingly, it got to a point where my inflated ego started getting in the way of my personal relationships, and even my self perception. I considered myself a great programmer, but not a very good person. I became quite self-loathing for many years, but I've noticed that's healed up after moving away from programming as a primary job responsibility, and my personal relationships have benefited, too.
I still love programming for the beauty of it, and I still dive into little personal programming projects a few times a year. Part of me wishes I did so more often, but I'm held back because the only way I've found to get through a project of any duration longer than a few days is to basically develop delusions of grandeur about it. Programming is fun and beautiful, but very hard, too, and somehow without the promise of the conference talk, or the influential git repo coming out of it, there's just too much friction. So, more often than not, these days, I simply don't bother. I guess with my current middle-aged testosterone levels, I'd rather keep my family and friends than be king of the world.
(That said, if anyone out there finds this relatable, but has been able to push through and develop a healthier, less ego-reliant, relationship with programming, I'd live to hear about it!)
Before getting into programming, I was a somewhat accomplished guitar player. By the time I was 20, I had played in a bunch of bands, recorded several albums, and gone on tour. As a result of these early successes, I developed a big ego about myself as a musician.
I realize now that the main thing driving my musical career was that ego. I enjoyed playing, but getting better at my craft was not my primary driver. Instead, it was that I wanted to be famous and rich and noteworthy and desirable. For me, playing guitar was inexorably linked with becoming a certain kind of person and gaining status.
Now any time I pick the guitar back up for more than a day or two, I quickly get lost in delusions of grandeur. I start thinking about how I'm going to change my whole lifestyle to "be a great guitar player" and playing itself takes the back seat to fantasizing about gaining power and status. Try as I might I can't just casually play guitar for its own sake—kind of like how you have trouble programming without the promise of a conference talk or an influential git repo coming out of it.
For me the solution has been to avoid playing music, and to focus on programming (and my family/friends) instead. I think the groove of ego I carved out as a guitarist is just too deep to allow me a healthier relationship to music. As a programmer, I don't have that same narcissistic false-self to live up to. I just enjoy it and want to get better because it's fun.
Maybe the solution for you could be to take up a creative pursuit other than programming?
I suspect that sort of thing won't be much help to you, however, because for me, my motivations have been relational more than power-based.
That, and I find enough joy from programming just from the utility of things I've worked on, rather than needing it to be a vehicle for influence.
Still, I'm very interested to see where things go for you.
Same experience here, and probably for a lot of devs. It took a good 10 years or so to break out of this. If I couldn't get something working that I expected to work, I silently took it out on myself. Must not be good/smart enough. And so I'd beat my head against the wall. Once I started letting broken code or an unfixed bug wait until the next day and saw that the sky didn't fall, and that I could eventually fix the issue, I started to trust myself more, and just let things be. Some days, everything works. Some days, nothing works. Your build fails and you spend hours updating some obscure library, and you don't get feature X done that day. It's really your decision whether or not you let this effect how you feel.
“Whenever distress or displeasure arises in your mind, remind yourself, “This is only my interpretation, not reality itself.” Then ask whether it falls within or outside your sphere of power. And, if it is beyond your power to control, let it go.” ― Epictetus
One thing I would add is that intrinsic motivation seems to be framed and activated very differently depending on one's personality. I find myself performing best when I'm on the edge of failure, trying to catch up to the high performers, and when recalling past times when I overcame failure or adversity. Comparing myself to the group described as demotivating in the post is the best motivator for me. And then there are little tweaks to one's environment (for me it's coffee, exercise, occasional travel, specific movies and music) that I find end up making an enormous difference in motivation, focus, and overall mental state. I suspect this has a lot to do with personal physiology and the environment in which you grew up.
With that caveat, the post is incredibly thoughtful and helpful, and I really enjoyed reading it.
I disagree with this [at least for me personally]. Being a good programmer is just straight up not something that's part of my identity. There's millions of people who are much, much better at it then me, and that's totally fine.
The reason that it's hard to work on hard problems is because they're hard! Sometimes, programming can be a really difficult or a slog of an activity. It's same with mastering any skill. Learning to play guitar, becoming an Olympic athlete, whatever. You can't Zen Buddhism your way out of the fact that you're going to spending years and years practicing until your fingers bleed, or until you're completely exhausted, etc.
Many Zen Buddhists know how long and hard practice for mastery is. Practicing meditation is in many ways skill acquisition as well, which is why it is called a practice.
You’ll of course be spending years and years practicing programming, and the insight that ego identification gets in the way and one must practice beginners mind is a simple yet deep understanding that comes from years and years of practice.
You can't just 'of course' this! I mean, you can, but that's the whole point. If you, or anyone reading this enough cares enough about being a great programmer, you wouldn't be on this site in the first place. Which is fine, I enjoy wasting time on here as much as anyone. But the people who are actually really good at programming? They're not reading blogs about ego. They're not writing blogs about ego. They're programming.
Look at what Fabrice Bellard has accomplished in the last 20 or so years: https://bellard.org/ . QEMU, FFMPEG. I will never even be close to the level that he is. I'm much closer in relative skill to the person who just wrote their first hello world yesterday, and I've been programming for 15 years or so. And that's totally fine with me. Programming is not my only interest in life.
For the blog author, it seems that they're searching for a reason that they're not as good at programming as they think should be. I mean, he's already a Staff Engineer at Circle CI. He's not someone who's been programming for a year. It's very possible that's he pretty close to being as good as he'll ever be. Sure, he'll keep improving, but he'll never be Fabrice Bellard. If he was, he already would be and wouldn't be writing a blog about why he's not.
So what I would say to him is: that's fine! Life is not just programming. "The Second Truth is that this suffering is caused by selfish craving and personal desire." You wrote an article about how your ego gets in the way of you becoming a better programmer, but its your ego that makes you want to be a better programmer in the first place!
Then why did you call yourself "good", why not just a programmer? ;-)
The point of the article isn't that there is a shortcut around having to put in the time, it is that ego sabotages your efforts to put in the time, and if you're somehow coerced into spending the time anyway can prevent you from receiving the expected benefit (eg. just staring at the code on the screen probably won't help, unless the problem is literally a typo).
Sure, but what I'm saying that that statement is almost meaningless in the grand scheme of things. Is not letting your ego get in the way a necessary part of getting to mastery? Absolutely. But no matter how much you change your thought process, or analyze the problem, you still need to eat the proverbial whale.
Think of all the people who've ever played basketball and have had any aspirations of joining the NBA. For the vast, vast majority of them, they just were never going to be good enough. They didn't have the talent. It didn't matter how much they practiced, how much they got their ego out of the way, how badly they wanted it. Only about 3,000 people have ever played in the NBA.
Now, I'm not saying you need to be in the NBA to be a "successful" basketball player, or whatever you want to call the equivalent of that for programming. What I'm saying is that everyone has ceilings for how good they can become at something. Maybe on the relative scale, the best you can ever be is a pretty good programmer, and that's it. No shame in that!
After all, part of Zen Budhism is accepting who you are and your limitations.
The teaching is that all beings are capable of enlightenment and outlines a path to accomplish that. The concept of "you" is part of the problem and meditation on sunyata can offer insight to that.
Then most of these articles usually say the recipe is to have the adult very closely observe the child and hit it with a stick any time it wanders of the "desired" path.
No.
How do you expect it to work between a real parent and a real child? I think it would fail miserably and annoy both sides. I'd suggest coming up with some nasty parental tricks instead. Also adjust them after some time, because they do tend to stop working.
> “I cannot say this too strongly: Do not compare yourselves to others. Be true to who you are, and continue to learn with all your might.” ― Daisaku Ikeda, Discussions on Youth
I often find the solution to many of my problems is to go back and practice from this mindset. I coincidentally went back and reread selections from this book a couple weeks ago, as I found my ego had been creeping into many facets of my life recently and I needed to go back and be reminded to practice with this mindset.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_Mind,_Beginner's_Mind
Early in my software engineering career I would constantly and painfully wonder if I was actually capable of fixing a certain bug or solving a new or difficult problem. But then after working hard on a solution, 99% of the time it would work out. After going through this process of debilitating self-doubt and eventual success over the course of years, it has become much more manageable.
I still sometimes panic when initially faced with a very difficult programming problem, but I can put those fears to rest much more easily by saying, "ok, I've solved hard problems before. I may not know how to solve this particular problem yet, but I feel confident that I will be able to figure it out just like I did in the past with difficult problems X, Y and Z."
At the risk of sounding pedantic, part of leaving the beginner phase — and the true value of experience — is developing a kind of armor against those feelings of inadequacy (of course you don't want this to go too far into feelings of overconfidence or an inability to reflect when things do go wrong).
I also think it's the responsibility of more senior engineers to recognize when a more junior teammate might be having those self-doubts and be empathetic while helping them build up their own successes.
The following this just my experience, but it's a bit of an odd one! So I thought I'd share for fun :)
I have this too and I only have 1 year of work experience.
What helped for me doing a course where I needed to know:
- C
- X86
beforehand.
The course was about analyzing binaries and malware. I didn't know any C and almost no x86. I did the course as a challenge, but it to date has been the most difficult programming challenge of my life. Teaching yourself 2 prerequisites while following a normal course load at the same time, while feeling insecure and have a strong suspicion to not be intelligent enough was tough, for me.
I've worked at 3 companies in that little 1 year of experience (2 times as a freelancer) and it hasn't come close yet. I'm hoping where it finally gets tougher, but I've heard from people who actually are experienced full-stack devs for 4+ years that that course was way harder than anything they have ever done.
So long story short: do super hard courses. If they're not the hardest courses of your life, then it isn't hard enough.
Give yourself some time in between too. It is all about the fun.
Everyone one on the team should be allowed to make mistakes or take bad choices. Juniors, seniors, managers... we are all people, we're all engineers, we're a team! Cult of perfection is limiting to everyone. The manager's job is to recognize everyone's contribution, no matter how small.
Too often, the teams project a higher bar than is actually reachable. Sure it will lead to sense of inadequacy, for absolutely baseless reasons.
The issue for me is that I really struggle to turn this theory in to effective practice. Each time after reading "The Practicing Mind" I have tried to cognitively remind myself whenever I was frustrated, to stop and look at the problem as a beginner would, to drop my ego, etc.
The problem is that it would sort of help, temporarily. I'd find myself a little bit better at getting a solid day of work done, but not dramatically better. After a week or so, I'd forget to even do the exercises, and I'd be back to struggling.
What honestly helps more than anything, the "magic bullet" really is pharmacology (aderall). For me, it somehow calms me down. I don't feel more energy, I feel tranquil, and able to let defeat roll off my shoulders.
Sadly, taking aderall is not a sustainable solution. Amphetamine is a neurotoxin which raises blood pressure. Not to mention, I don't like being "tranquil" for anything other than my work. I like my 'normal' state of semi-uncontrolled energy, which is great for exercising and video games. I'd like to be able to turn this feeling on or off, and taking a medication doesn't allow for this.
So I tend to see saw between three states... 1) Struggling at work, barely getting by, quality of life sucks. 2) On medication, happy at work, feeling productive and peaceful, but desire to get off medication 3) Off medication, using "Beginners Mind" but find my ability to implement it in a way that is strongly effective, absent.
As always ymmv, and good luck :)
What helps for me the most is intentionality. To literally set my intention for a day or for a problem right before I jump in. So if I know I'm about to jump into a tricky problem I literally take a few seconds to remind myself of the attitude I want to bring and even exactly what I want to focus on.
So this would be things like "Don't try to judge difficulty (easy/hard), just go wherever it takes me" or "Don't be afraid of the amount of work". One that super helpful for me is deliberately separating to "understanding" part of a problem from the "solving" - so i'd tell myself "I'm just trying to understand what's going on right now - solve later". Etc etc.
Hope this helps.
So when the author was talking about how being an expert is really just a matter of become a great student I was quickly reminded of my golf game. Where I often time find myself with the lowest handicap I have ever had without actually feeling like I am improving. I shave a stroke one day. Then another.. and another, and before I know it I am a 3 instead of a 10.
That being said, I wouldn't say I have an ego problem in coding myself because tbh I have always felt like a bit of an imposter. I think my imposter syndrome has actually ended up being a good thing over time in my career as a programmer. It seems to have kept me grounded, and as the author suggested is a good thing, it seems to have kept me in the forever a student mentality.