First (published) Brain Dump (of many)
written: 2021-12-05
There are a few things I want to do. I have a lot of goals and dreams and wishes. One of those is to have a large body of work that I can consider my creation. Not only should it be a large amount but also of good quality and diverse in modes and media. Off the top of my head are three:
These occur to me now because of what media I've consumed lately. But I want, very much, to turn that consumption (passive, addicted and mindless) into production (active, self-directed and mindful) [1].
I understand that it's not enough to just say something like this and be happy with it; I understand well the idea of having thought/written about something equating to the feeling of doing it. There needs to be some guard in place, some accountability to ensure that I actually get the work done. Is there someone to entrust this upon? Is there someone who will, perhaps, do this with me?
The key here is never to think of perfection, just of completion. Perfectionism is such an easy thing to hide behind, and a seemingly noble one too. The aspiration to do great work is one that can be nodded at, approvingly. But it doesn't do anyone any good to be a perfectionist who never produces anything. Even Fran Lebowitz, who has been working on a book for something like 11 years, still produces her personality, puts something into the world.
For me, the trouble is finding something worth writing about. Not only that, but something that is worth reading from someone like me. It's not like I have some incredibly unique and niche perspective on the world I live in. Hell, the world I live in isn't even that interesting! So then, what is there to write about but the writing itself?
My crutch here is to use a textbook of some sort. Some methodical approach to finding something to write about is finding something to tell me what to write about. In doing so, it might teach me a thing or two about isolated sentence structures or, Freight Train Sentences.
Let me return for a moment to perfectionism and its use as an excuse. It's an excuse to never get things done or to stop. For me it's acted as a realisation that I'll never be "perfect" at something. I stopped climbing as much because I realised I'd never be the best climber. I stopped cello because I realised that I'd never be Yo Yo Ma, same goes for piano and Barenboim. Now, the benefit of being an amateur is the other side of the excuse: as an amateur, you have endless potential. No one expects you to do well but if you do, the praise is generous, the approval is high. The ego comes with it. Then we arrive at the uncanny valley. The bit where you realise that there's a lot more to it. The techniques are more difficult, the bulk of existing work grows, the understanding of what is considered "quality" in the field starts to become unwieldy and your appreciation for the art distorts into a terrified awe. You start to know how much you don't know (and how much the experts know that you don't know). This is my anxiety.
A few years ago, I had the chance to see Peter Laurie's signature talk: "6 Key Things". He outlines the 6 things which are crucial in any developer's toolbox from graduate to senior. Marketed for university students (especially for final-year students), tickets are almost always sold out but at his request, the talk is never recorded and it's encouraged not to just tell people what the 6 key things are. One of the topics he covers (may or may not be one of the 6 key things, I can't remember) is the Dunning Kruger Effect[2]. One part of this effect he describes is the moment after you realise that you're not hot shit. There's a steep curve down to the depths of despair where you simmer at a "holy shit there's so much to know and learn" state. Either you stick with it long enough to be actually good and to know it. Or you jump out of it entirely. The former is a steep curve back up to that state of knowing you know stuff and that's what I'm travelling up (and constantly tripping down) with software development. I've stuck with it for the money and I'm starting to understand that I know a lot more than I used to. It's a great feeling. With nearly everything else, I've jumped out because...I was scared. I didn't want to be judged, criticised, laughed at, death-stared at, scolded, yadda yadda for being bad at something I used to have fun doing.
A few weeks ago, my rock climbing friend told me something while we were playing mahjong. I'd just taught him along with a few others and they were picking it up fast. At some point in my explanation, I jokingly said it was "useless" knowledge to which he replied: "It's not really useless if you're having fun, is it."
It's not really useless if you're having fun.
That fucked with my head so much. It still does. This whole culture of hustle and grind is so results-oriented. It's always looking at the bottom line. It's always looking for ways to trim the fat, square everything into the margins, in other words to make everything perfect. There's no space for humanity. Fine, there's a time and place for surgical precision; we don't want our surgeons to be using wabi-sabi as an explanation for a failed operation. But with the culture that I've been working in, anything that isn't work is useless. If it isn't making you money, it's not providing value. Value to who? Sure as shit isn't you [3].
Look, there's enough anti-work content out there, I don't have to tell you about it. What I'm trying to get at with this stupidly long ramble is this: stop trying to be perfect. Do it for yourself. Do it because you enjoy it. I have to admit that I loved writing this. It's therapeutic. Maybe I arrived at something, maybe next time I won't. Maybe I shouldn't give a fuck. I sure as hell didn't expect this to go the way it did. I've renamed the title a few times since writing it. It started off as "One Essay A Week", then it became "On Perfectionism". I'm going to call it: "The First One". The first what: Essay? Attempt? Step? I don't know. Whatever it is, this is the first one.
[1]: Not to say that all consumption is passive/addicted/mindless but mine surely has been. Nor to say that all production is active, directed nor mindful
[2]: A lot of people say it wrong and are really confident about it. A lot of people ask what it is just to get the satisfaction of seeing someone explain it wrong. I find both to be distasteful
[3]: This line of thinking can get toxic pretty quick. I'm a typical hustle-and-grind kinda dude so take what I say with a grain of salt. This kind of thinking won't get you anywhere in work if that's where you want to be. I've grown in my work because I've prioritised it and because I knew that I would ultimately benefit from doing longer hours, working a little harder (also working a lot smarter). I'm not saying that you should allow yourself to be exploited. I'm saying that if you're asked to do more by your superiors, you'd better be making more money or learning something. Both is ideal, at least one or the other but never neither.