WEBVTT 00:00:16.880 --> 00:00:17.849 NICKOLAS MEANS: How's everybody doing? 00:00:17.849 --> 00:00:19.720 AUDIENCE: Good! Yeah! Yeah! 00:00:19.720 --> 00:00:21.769 N.M.: Nobody's saying tired? I would have said tired 00:00:21.769 --> 00:00:24.800 if somebody asked me that question. I'm so exhausted. 00:00:24.800 --> 00:00:26.640 It's been a great conference, but it's been long 00:00:26.640 --> 00:00:28.800 and I am privileged to have the last speaking 00:00:28.800 --> 00:00:30.529 slot. Which is a really funny joke to play 00:00:30.529 --> 00:00:32.279 on a guy with impostor syndrome. So whoever set 00:00:32.279 --> 00:00:37.120 the schedule, nice job. 00:00:37.120 --> 00:00:39.030 My name is Nickolas Means, but we are about 00:00:39.030 --> 00:00:40.899 to be really good friends, so please call me 00:00:40.899 --> 00:00:42.870 Nick. You can find me- 00:00:42.870 --> 00:00:43.589 AUDIENCE: Hi Nick! 00:00:43.589 --> 00:00:45.440 N.M.: Hi. You can find me as @nmeans on 00:00:45.440 --> 00:00:47.059 Twitter if you're playing along on your laptop or 00:00:47.059 --> 00:00:50.489 your phone. I'm an engineer at WellMatch health. I'm 00:00:50.489 --> 00:00:53.000 lucky enough to get to remote pair nearly 100% 00:00:53.000 --> 00:00:55.920 of the time from beautiful Austin, Texas with a 00:00:55.920 --> 00:00:58.280 lot of really smart people, fixing some of the 00:00:58.280 --> 00:01:01.939 hard problems that vex our health care system. 00:01:01.939 --> 00:01:04.409 I want to start by asking you to think 00:01:04.409 --> 00:01:08.130 a little bit. What is your biggest fear at 00:01:08.130 --> 00:01:10.229 work? What's the worst thing that could possibly happen 00:01:10.229 --> 00:01:12.150 to you at your job? 00:01:12.150 --> 00:01:15.299 AUDIENCE: Get fired! 00:01:15.299 --> 00:01:19.079 N.M.: I can tell you mine. I've been a 00:01:19.079 --> 00:01:21.759 software developer for over a decade now. I did 00:01:21.759 --> 00:01:24.840 some PHP spaghetti for awhile. Moved into Ruby. Been 00:01:24.840 --> 00:01:28.939 doing Ruby for, gosh, eight years now. I've worked 00:01:28.939 --> 00:01:31.840 as a solo developer. I've worked as a cylo 00:01:31.840 --> 00:01:33.259 developer where I was the only guy working on 00:01:33.259 --> 00:01:35.340 a product and I brought our team. I've worked 00:01:35.340 --> 00:01:36.780 in a really good team environment which is what 00:01:36.780 --> 00:01:39.090 I'm in now. 00:01:39.090 --> 00:01:41.159 But I've had this persistent fear, the whole time 00:01:41.159 --> 00:01:42.729 I've been a software developer, that I was about 00:01:42.729 --> 00:01:46.170 to be fired. Now, how many times do you 00:01:46.170 --> 00:01:47.999 think I've been fired in my ten plus years 00:01:47.999 --> 00:01:50.649 of software development? 00:01:50.649 --> 00:01:52.350 Brandon right. Three. 00:01:52.350 --> 00:01:53.700 No, zero. 00:01:53.700 --> 00:01:56.789 I've never been fired. But it might happen any 00:01:56.789 --> 00:01:58.999 day now, or at least, that's what my brain 00:01:58.999 --> 00:02:01.240 persists in telling me all the time. It's just 00:02:01.240 --> 00:02:03.799 a matter of time until my boss figures out 00:02:03.799 --> 00:02:05.560 that I really have no idea what I'm talking 00:02:05.560 --> 00:02:07.670 about and I'm a terrible software developer and all 00:02:07.670 --> 00:02:10.199 my commits are crap. And then I'm gonna get 00:02:10.199 --> 00:02:12.680 the pink slip. 00:02:12.680 --> 00:02:14.950 Which is not true, right? Because I've convinced a 00:02:14.950 --> 00:02:17.030 bunch of people to give me a job, and 00:02:17.030 --> 00:02:19.740 I've shipped good code, and I've been through pull 00:02:19.740 --> 00:02:23.000 requests processes. My code's been reviewed. I pair now. 00:02:23.000 --> 00:02:27.360 So, I'm, I'm an OK developer? 00:02:27.360 --> 00:02:31.310 This is the, the gist of impostor syndrome. It's 00:02:31.310 --> 00:02:34.310 a set of beliefs and behaviors that was first 00:02:34.310 --> 00:02:37.620 identified back in 1978 by Doctors Pauline Rose Clance 00:02:37.620 --> 00:02:42.370 and Suzanne Imes at Georgia State University. Dr. Clance 00:02:42.370 --> 00:02:45.600 was on the psychological staff at Georgia State and 00:02:45.600 --> 00:02:47.880 Dr. Imes was a research, a predoctoral researcher under 00:02:47.880 --> 00:02:51.070 her. And they did a lot of interviews with 00:02:51.070 --> 00:02:55.140 graduate students. Female graduate students specifically. Now, these women 00:02:55.140 --> 00:02:58.740 had all gotten into very competitive graduate programs. They 00:02:58.740 --> 00:03:03.590 had all been published in very prestigious psychological journals. 00:03:03.590 --> 00:03:06.760 But they still didn't think very much of themselves. 00:03:06.760 --> 00:03:08.940 There's actually a really great definition of impostor syndrome 00:03:08.940 --> 00:03:14.130 in this abstract. Despite outstanding academic and professional accomplishments, 00:03:14.130 --> 00:03:17.000 women who experience the impostor phenomenon persist in believing 00:03:17.000 --> 00:03:19.410 that they are really not bright and have fooled 00:03:19.410 --> 00:03:22.230 anyone who thinks otherwise. 00:03:22.230 --> 00:03:24.760 So these women were all very prestigious, all very 00:03:24.760 --> 00:03:27.490 successful, but still thought that they had everybody around 00:03:27.490 --> 00:03:31.260 them fooled. And all the stuff that people told 00:03:31.260 --> 00:03:34.510 them about themselves was not true. So if you've 00:03:34.510 --> 00:03:37.820 experienced these kind of feelings, where you think that 00:03:37.820 --> 00:03:39.400 people around you say nice things about you that 00:03:39.400 --> 00:03:40.730 aren't really true, let me tell you a little 00:03:40.730 --> 00:03:41.870 bit about yourself. 00:03:41.870 --> 00:03:45.600 A pretty good chance that you're an introvert. Pretty 00:03:45.600 --> 00:03:49.210 good chance you're a perfectionist. At times you're a 00:03:49.210 --> 00:03:53.070 workaholic. At other times you are a procrastinator. You 00:03:53.070 --> 00:03:57.120 probably have a deep-seated and abiding fear of failure. 00:03:57.120 --> 00:03:59.060 You probably get really uncomfortable when people pay you 00:03:59.060 --> 00:04:03.150 a compliment. You probably feel less competent than your 00:04:03.150 --> 00:04:08.150 peers. If that resonates any, there's good news. You're 00:04:08.150 --> 00:04:09.950 not alone. 00:04:09.950 --> 00:04:12.360 As it turns out, impostor feelings are really pretty 00:04:12.360 --> 00:04:16.569 common. Dr. Clance's research indicates that about 70% of 00:04:16.569 --> 00:04:19.738 people experience impostor syndrome at some point in their 00:04:19.738 --> 00:04:22.410 careers. Now, that's not to say that everybody experiences 00:04:22.410 --> 00:04:23.960 impostor syndrome the same way. 00:04:23.960 --> 00:04:25.910 There's people like me, who have experienced it throughout 00:04:25.910 --> 00:04:28.930 their entire career as a persistent feeling, afraid that 00:04:28.930 --> 00:04:30.810 they were gonna be fired at any moment, and 00:04:30.810 --> 00:04:32.650 there's other people that maybe it only happens when 00:04:32.650 --> 00:04:34.320 they start a new job or they, they emerge 00:04:34.320 --> 00:04:36.540 from college into the workforce. 00:04:36.540 --> 00:04:38.940 But no matter where you are on the scale, 00:04:38.940 --> 00:04:40.710 there's things that you can do to lessen this 00:04:40.710 --> 00:04:43.210 reaction that you feel. So there's two things I 00:04:43.210 --> 00:04:45.510 want to do in this talk. The first thing 00:04:45.510 --> 00:04:46.720 is I want to tell you how your brain 00:04:46.720 --> 00:04:49.120 trolls you. Cause there's a lot of stuff that 00:04:49.120 --> 00:04:52.200 goes on in your head that reinforces this impostorism, 00:04:52.200 --> 00:04:55.410 and this inability to accept your success. 00:04:55.410 --> 00:04:56.110 And I want to tell you how to patch 00:04:56.110 --> 00:04:59.340 your brain. As it turns out, impostor syndrome in 00:04:59.340 --> 00:05:01.139 your head is sort of this infinite loop that 00:05:01.139 --> 00:05:04.470 goes around and around and around. And what we 00:05:04.470 --> 00:05:06.490 have to do is find places where we can 00:05:06.490 --> 00:05:09.030 hook into that loop and get out of that 00:05:09.030 --> 00:05:12.290 cycle. And if we can do that, then we 00:05:12.290 --> 00:05:14.620 can start functioning a little bit better. 00:05:14.620 --> 00:05:15.960 But, before I do that, I want to tell 00:05:15.960 --> 00:05:20.090 you a story. It's about the first conference talk 00:05:20.090 --> 00:05:23.040 I ever gave. And you folks didn't know this 00:05:23.040 --> 00:05:24.400 when you walked into the room, but you're lucky 00:05:24.400 --> 00:05:26.500 enough to be part of this grand experiment. Somebody 00:05:26.500 --> 00:05:28.120 decided it was a good idea to give me 00:05:28.120 --> 00:05:31.740 a speaking slot at RailsConf. 00:05:31.740 --> 00:05:33.900 I decided, on a whim, about an hour before 00:05:33.900 --> 00:05:35.660 the CFP closed that I was gonna put in 00:05:35.660 --> 00:05:38.410 this talk proposal. And it's one that had already 00:05:38.410 --> 00:05:40.570 been rejected by a couple of conferences. So I 00:05:40.570 --> 00:05:41.889 tweaked it a little bit. I cleaned it up. 00:05:41.889 --> 00:05:44.990 I made it a little bit better. And submitted 00:05:44.990 --> 00:05:45.650 it. 00:05:45.650 --> 00:05:48.760 And the RailsConf submission process is, like, custom-tailored for 00:05:48.760 --> 00:05:52.210 someone with impostor syndrome. Because the first round is 00:05:52.210 --> 00:05:53.480 blind. So I don't have to worry about it 00:05:53.480 --> 00:05:54.760 that I don't have this great reputation in the 00:05:54.760 --> 00:05:57.980 community and nobody knows my name. And during this 00:05:57.980 --> 00:06:00.270 process, there's the chance for people reviewing your proposal 00:06:00.270 --> 00:06:01.020 to give you feedback. 00:06:01.020 --> 00:06:04.100 So, Sarah Mae, bless her heart, read my early 00:06:04.100 --> 00:06:07.310 rough draft and gave me some great feedback. I 00:06:07.310 --> 00:06:10.020 tightened up my abstract quite a lot, and apparently 00:06:10.020 --> 00:06:11.260 it was enough to get me through the final 00:06:11.260 --> 00:06:14.490 selected, and I got a talk accepted. 00:06:14.490 --> 00:06:16.790 So I was hanging out with my wife and 00:06:16.790 --> 00:06:18.460 my three-year-old son when I got the email that 00:06:18.460 --> 00:06:22.210 my talk was accepted at RailsConf. And I gasped, 00:06:22.210 --> 00:06:24.610 and I was speechless, and my wife thought somebody 00:06:24.610 --> 00:06:26.389 important had died. 00:06:26.389 --> 00:06:30.630 Finally, I got the words out to tell her 00:06:30.630 --> 00:06:34.350 what was happening. And I was very excited. So 00:06:34.350 --> 00:06:36.090 when I put the proposal in, the whole time 00:06:36.090 --> 00:06:37.330 I'm waiting to see whether I got in or 00:06:37.330 --> 00:06:40.380 not, I'm envisioning. Our team has a Friday happy 00:06:40.380 --> 00:06:42.010 hour, and I'm envisioning getting to tell my team 00:06:42.010 --> 00:06:44.120 mates that I got a talk accepted at RailsConf. 00:06:44.120 --> 00:06:45.790 And I got to do that, and it was 00:06:45.790 --> 00:06:47.010 glorious. 00:06:47.010 --> 00:06:50.680 But, then reality sets in. I don't know if 00:06:50.680 --> 00:06:53.010 any of you have ever spoken at a user 00:06:53.010 --> 00:06:55.430 group or something, but as it turns out, you 00:06:55.430 --> 00:06:57.720 don't actually have to write the talk before it 00:06:57.720 --> 00:07:01.190 gets accepted. So once your talk is accepted, you 00:07:01.190 --> 00:07:04.210 have to start writing it. And it plunged me, 00:07:04.210 --> 00:07:08.530 immediately, into this worry, fear, panic and dread. 00:07:08.530 --> 00:07:10.010 I sat down, I tried to make an initial 00:07:10.010 --> 00:07:12.639 outline. Total creative block. I couldn't come up with 00:07:12.639 --> 00:07:14.410 anything. I couldn't organize my thoughts to save my 00:07:14.410 --> 00:07:17.300 life. The funniest thing was my brain played this 00:07:17.300 --> 00:07:20.090 great trick on me. It told me I didn't 00:07:20.090 --> 00:07:22.720 even have impostor syndrome bad enough to give a 00:07:22.720 --> 00:07:29.720 talk on impostor syndrome. 00:07:32.229 --> 00:07:35.000 So I, I pushed through it. And I, I, 00:07:35.000 --> 00:07:37.639 I took an impostor syndrome test, on which I 00:07:37.639 --> 00:07:40.880 scored very highly. And I'll share that test with 00:07:40.880 --> 00:07:45.510 you guys later. So after that, I jumped into 00:07:45.510 --> 00:07:48.690 full-on overwork. Now, normally I am a huge procrastinator. 00:07:48.690 --> 00:07:50.650 Normally, I sit and wait until the very last 00:07:50.650 --> 00:07:51.990 minute to do something. But I guess my brain 00:07:51.990 --> 00:07:54.669 thought this was important, because it jumped into overwork 00:07:54.669 --> 00:07:56.830 from day one. Like, three days after I found 00:07:56.830 --> 00:07:58.490 out my talk was accepted, my family was heading 00:07:58.490 --> 00:08:00.639 on vacation, and, you know, as you do, I 00:08:00.639 --> 00:08:03.490 loaded my Kindle up with psychological journal articles and 00:08:03.490 --> 00:08:05.600 brought books, and I spent most of my vacation 00:08:05.600 --> 00:08:08.900 reading about impostor syndrome. Which is not what I'd 00:08:08.900 --> 00:08:13.130 planned to do. 00:08:13.130 --> 00:08:15.000 And then hopefully the next step in the cycle 00:08:15.000 --> 00:08:16.669 is success. Now, clearly the jury is still out 00:08:16.669 --> 00:08:19.180 on this. But hopefully when you're done you won't 00:08:19.180 --> 00:08:20.520 feel like your time has been wasted in this 00:08:20.520 --> 00:08:23.080 room. And after that, I'm gonna feel some initial 00:08:23.080 --> 00:08:24.040 relief. 00:08:24.040 --> 00:08:25.710 A coworker asked me - I had this long 00:08:25.710 --> 00:08:27.280 list of things that I hope would happen after 00:08:27.280 --> 00:08:29.560 the talk. And a coworker asked me, OK, so 00:08:29.560 --> 00:08:31.139 what do you really want to happen after this 00:08:31.139 --> 00:08:32.849 talk? Really, all I want out of this talk 00:08:32.849 --> 00:08:35.679 is to help somebody. If I accomplish that, that's 00:08:35.679 --> 00:08:36.729 all I want out of this. 00:08:36.729 --> 00:08:39.019 So, if that happens, I'll feel some initial relief. 00:08:39.019 --> 00:08:42.500 But then, as we do, I will move into 00:08:42.500 --> 00:08:44.120 this step where I am focusing on all the 00:08:44.120 --> 00:08:46.250 little failures in this talk. I'm gonna focus on 00:08:46.250 --> 00:08:48.570 the jokes that I didn't get just right. I'm 00:08:48.570 --> 00:08:50.330 gonna focus on the times I said uh, and 00:08:50.330 --> 00:08:53.610 um and stumbled over my points and the content 00:08:53.610 --> 00:08:55.270 areas that I wish I had covered better or 00:08:55.270 --> 00:08:58.020 phrased differently. 00:08:58.020 --> 00:08:59.140 And then I'm gonna move into sort of the 00:08:59.140 --> 00:09:02.130 meat of impostor syndrome. I'm gonna start denying my 00:09:02.130 --> 00:09:05.070 success. I'm gonna start feeling like people saying nice 00:09:05.070 --> 00:09:06.570 things to me in the hallway are just doing 00:09:06.570 --> 00:09:09.620 it because they know I have impostor syndrome and 00:09:09.620 --> 00:09:12.630 need compliments. 00:09:12.630 --> 00:09:14.610 And that's, you know, that's what we do. We 00:09:14.610 --> 00:09:17.850 write off our success, and it robs you of 00:09:17.850 --> 00:09:20.899 your ability to enjoy your success. So then, when 00:09:20.899 --> 00:09:23.240 the next opportunity comes up, you cycle right back 00:09:23.240 --> 00:09:25.140 into this thing, because you've never been successful in 00:09:25.140 --> 00:09:28.240 your life. At least in your own mind. 00:09:28.240 --> 00:09:30.300 This is the impostor cycle. Again, this was, this 00:09:30.300 --> 00:09:34.640 was identified in Dr. Clance's research, and it's, it's 00:09:34.640 --> 00:09:36.950 driven by the superstition that we have to go 00:09:36.950 --> 00:09:40.980 through this fear and doubt and overwork and panic 00:09:40.980 --> 00:09:44.260 to get anything done. So you go through it, 00:09:44.260 --> 00:09:47.430 you look back on it. You did OK. The 00:09:47.430 --> 00:09:49.350 reason you did OK is because you went through 00:09:49.350 --> 00:09:52.740 this big process of being all panicky and fearful 00:09:52.740 --> 00:09:54.410 and procrastinating and overworking. 00:09:54.410 --> 00:09:56.730 So you develop this superstition that if you don't 00:09:56.730 --> 00:09:59.240 do that, if you don't go through that hell, 00:09:59.240 --> 00:10:00.950 you're not gonna be able to pull of whatever 00:10:00.950 --> 00:10:02.990 it is you're trying to pull off. And so 00:10:02.990 --> 00:10:04.890 it denies you the ability to ever absorb your 00:10:04.890 --> 00:10:06.880 success and feel like you actually are a capable, 00:10:06.880 --> 00:10:07.890 competent person. 00:10:07.890 --> 00:10:09.910 There's a lot of stuff going on in your 00:10:09.910 --> 00:10:12.230 brain that causes this to happen. I alluded this 00:10:12.230 --> 00:10:15.020 to some of these earlier. A, one of the 00:10:15.020 --> 00:10:18.140 first ones is introversion. There's probably a lot of 00:10:18.140 --> 00:10:21.500 introverts in this room. And the thing about introverts 00:10:21.500 --> 00:10:23.140 is we all spend a lot of time inside 00:10:23.140 --> 00:10:25.330 our own heads, right. We spend a lot of 00:10:25.330 --> 00:10:29.740 time replaying social interactions, wishing we hadn't been awkward, 00:10:29.740 --> 00:10:32.230 wishing we were better at small talk. We meet 00:10:32.230 --> 00:10:34.290 this hero of ours at a conference. We go 00:10:34.290 --> 00:10:36.010 talk to him and we say something really stupid 00:10:36.010 --> 00:10:37.190 and put our foot in our mouth and we 00:10:37.190 --> 00:10:40.170 spend the next six hours thinking about that. So 00:10:40.170 --> 00:10:44.339 we spend a lot of time in self-criticism. 00:10:44.339 --> 00:10:47.200 The next thing is perfectionism. And the, the two 00:10:47.200 --> 00:10:51.500 most highly-correlated personality attributes to impostor syndrome are introversion 00:10:51.500 --> 00:10:54.589 and perfectionism. So the thing about perfectionism is we 00:10:54.589 --> 00:10:56.580 have very high standards for ourselves, right. We want 00:10:56.580 --> 00:10:59.810 to get the gold standard. So what happens when 00:10:59.810 --> 00:11:04.709 we hit silver plus, plus, plus? We have failed. 00:11:04.709 --> 00:11:08.310 So, you have this inability to ever do as 00:11:08.310 --> 00:11:10.130 well as you think you ought to do. You 00:11:10.130 --> 00:11:11.920 have this inability to ever pull anything off to 00:11:11.920 --> 00:11:15.140 your own perfect standard. And then it goes into 00:11:15.140 --> 00:11:18.330 something even more sinister than that. There's this need 00:11:18.330 --> 00:11:21.520 in perfectionism that emerges to always be the best. 00:11:21.520 --> 00:11:23.700 It's not enough to be good. You have to 00:11:23.700 --> 00:11:27.029 be the shining star. And so you get into 00:11:27.029 --> 00:11:29.550 this, it, it can create some really weird things 00:11:29.550 --> 00:11:31.149 in your job. 00:11:31.149 --> 00:11:34.550 So, when a coworker, say, gets a lot of 00:11:34.550 --> 00:11:38.209 praise for pulling something off, I feel threatened by 00:11:38.209 --> 00:11:41.250 that. Which is stupid, right? I know, intellectually, that 00:11:41.250 --> 00:11:43.360 I shouldn't. I know that there's more than enough 00:11:43.360 --> 00:11:45.410 credit to go around. It's not a zero-sum game. 00:11:45.410 --> 00:11:48.270 But I still feel like, somehow, my coworker getting 00:11:48.270 --> 00:11:52.020 praise is taking something away from my shiny gold 00:11:52.020 --> 00:11:54.800 star. And so it sets you up to always 00:11:54.800 --> 00:11:56.240 have to be perfect. 00:11:56.240 --> 00:11:58.149 It's terrible. 00:11:58.149 --> 00:12:01.399 And it feeds into workaholism, because it takes a 00:12:01.399 --> 00:12:03.470 lot of work to live up to that standard 00:12:03.470 --> 00:12:04.620 that we all think we need to live up 00:12:04.620 --> 00:12:08.140 to. A whole lot of work. Or, when we 00:12:08.140 --> 00:12:10.300 get into a situation where we know we can't, 00:12:10.300 --> 00:12:15.480 we procrastinate. Now, I've been a world-champion procrastinator for 00:12:15.480 --> 00:12:18.589 the bulk of my career. 00:12:18.589 --> 00:12:21.399 And it wasn't until maybe a year ago that 00:12:21.399 --> 00:12:24.839 I realized how intertwined it was with impostor syndrome. 00:12:24.839 --> 00:12:27.149 Because what procrastination does for you, when you're a 00:12:27.149 --> 00:12:29.610 perfectionist, is it gives you a forcing function. It 00:12:29.610 --> 00:12:31.839 lets you get something out the door that might 00:12:31.839 --> 00:12:33.260 not be as perfect as you want it to 00:12:33.260 --> 00:12:35.390 be. It gives you a time box. And what 00:12:35.390 --> 00:12:37.050 you can produce in that time box has to 00:12:37.050 --> 00:12:38.190 be good enough. 00:12:38.190 --> 00:12:42.640 And it also gives you a way out of 00:12:42.640 --> 00:12:46.350 failure. Because, like I mentioned earlier, impostors often have 00:12:46.350 --> 00:12:49.220 a strong fear of failure. So if you procrastinate, 00:12:49.220 --> 00:12:50.630 if you wait until the very last minute to 00:12:50.630 --> 00:12:54.459 do something, and then you fail, well. It's just 00:12:54.459 --> 00:12:55.870 cause you didn't spend enough time on it. It's 00:12:55.870 --> 00:12:59.399 not a reflection of you as a person. 00:12:59.399 --> 00:13:01.190 Which is the perfect segue into the next thing 00:13:01.190 --> 00:13:03.080 going on in your head, which is fear of 00:13:03.080 --> 00:13:08.980 failure. As impostors, we are terrified for others to 00:13:08.980 --> 00:13:13.050 see us struggle. We are scared to death to, 00:13:13.050 --> 00:13:14.709 for anybody else to see that we might not 00:13:14.709 --> 00:13:16.709 be able to pull it off the first time 00:13:16.709 --> 00:13:19.480 we try. Because we feel like we're walking on 00:13:19.480 --> 00:13:22.180 eggshells. We have this very thin facade, that if 00:13:22.180 --> 00:13:24.000 anybody can get through, anybody can see around, they're 00:13:24.000 --> 00:13:26.360 gonna realize what a complete and total failure we 00:13:26.360 --> 00:13:28.310 are. 00:13:28.310 --> 00:13:31.160 So anytime there's a crack in that armor, we're 00:13:31.160 --> 00:13:33.310 afraid that it's all gonna come tumbling down. So 00:13:33.310 --> 00:13:36.339 we develop this deep-seated fear of failure that makes 00:13:36.339 --> 00:13:38.220 it very hard to go and try to do 00:13:38.220 --> 00:13:40.450 new things. It makes it hard to do anything 00:13:40.450 --> 00:13:43.029 you think you might look foolish doing. A perfect 00:13:43.029 --> 00:13:45.360 example of that is the dance floor. And one 00:13:45.360 --> 00:13:46.589 thing you will not see on the dance floor 00:13:46.589 --> 00:13:49.209 is this guy. 00:13:49.209 --> 00:13:50.470 Much to the chagrin of my wife, by the 00:13:50.470 --> 00:13:51.950 way. She would really prefer me to get out 00:13:51.950 --> 00:13:54.709 on the dance floor with her. But, I'm so 00:13:54.709 --> 00:13:56.480 afraid that I'm gonna get out there and make 00:13:56.480 --> 00:13:58.730 a fool of myself that I just won't do 00:13:58.730 --> 00:14:01.130 it. I won't risk that part of my personality 00:14:01.130 --> 00:14:03.579 because somehow it's gonna make people think less of 00:14:03.579 --> 00:14:05.860 me. I know it's kind of a contrived, trivial 00:14:05.860 --> 00:14:07.480 example, but it plays out on the rest of 00:14:07.480 --> 00:14:08.410 your professional life. 00:14:08.410 --> 00:14:10.350 It plays out when you're trying to learn something 00:14:10.350 --> 00:14:13.180 new, or you're trying to fight through a hard 00:14:13.180 --> 00:14:17.519 problem. You're kind of afraid to admit that you 00:14:17.519 --> 00:14:20.990 don't know. 00:14:20.990 --> 00:14:23.589 This one is really the meat of impostor syndrome. 00:14:23.589 --> 00:14:26.610 This idea of denial of success. One thing we're 00:14:26.610 --> 00:14:30.300 all really good at, as impostors, is deflecting objective 00:14:30.300 --> 00:14:33.940 evidence that we're actually competent and successful. We're very 00:14:33.940 --> 00:14:37.589 good at pushing those things away. We deflect compliments, 00:14:37.589 --> 00:14:41.190 we write off promotions. We got new jobs because 00:14:41.190 --> 00:14:44.380 we're good interviewers, not because we're good developers. 00:14:44.380 --> 00:14:47.480 In fact, when I found out my talk was 00:14:47.480 --> 00:14:51.370 accepted, the first thought that came into my mind 00:14:51.370 --> 00:14:53.800 is, man, that's gonna be such a let-down tomorrow 00:14:53.800 --> 00:14:55.490 when I get the email that their CFP system 00:14:55.490 --> 00:14:59.820 screwed up and emailed everybody a letter of acceptance. 00:14:59.820 --> 00:15:01.570 So stupid, right? 00:15:01.570 --> 00:15:03.320 But that's, the, these are the things that your 00:15:03.320 --> 00:15:06.339 brain does that traps you in this cycle. It 00:15:06.339 --> 00:15:10.010 gets into attribution theory in psychology. And that's the 00:15:10.010 --> 00:15:14.050 idea of where you attribute success and failure. As 00:15:14.050 --> 00:15:16.820 impostors, we tend to contribute success to external factors. 00:15:16.820 --> 00:15:20.480 So, it's luck. And timing. And knowing the right 00:15:20.480 --> 00:15:22.170 people. 00:15:22.170 --> 00:15:24.410 Whereas we take failure and we internalize it. It 00:15:24.410 --> 00:15:26.970 speaks to who we are as a person. If 00:15:26.970 --> 00:15:29.110 we fail, it's completely a reflection on us. But 00:15:29.110 --> 00:15:31.170 if we succeed, it's not a reflection on us 00:15:31.170 --> 00:15:32.800 at all, it's a reflection of the situations we 00:15:32.800 --> 00:15:35.519 found ourselves in. 00:15:35.519 --> 00:15:36.540 We also have a little bit of fear of 00:15:36.540 --> 00:15:39.589 success going on. There's this fear that being successful 00:15:39.589 --> 00:15:42.730 might ostracize you from your peers. I know I 00:15:42.730 --> 00:15:44.680 felt this in school a lot. I was the 00:15:44.680 --> 00:15:47.339 kid that knew the answer every time, and by 00:15:47.339 --> 00:15:50.209 about third grade I had developed a defense mechanism 00:15:50.209 --> 00:15:53.010 where I hardly ever raised my hand. Cause I 00:15:53.010 --> 00:15:53.910 didn't want to be the kid that knew all 00:15:53.910 --> 00:15:57.779 the answers, cause that kid didn't have any friends. 00:15:57.779 --> 00:16:01.149 This is part of why people from marginalized groups 00:16:01.149 --> 00:16:04.339 suffer disproportionately more from impostor syndrome than the rest 00:16:04.339 --> 00:16:06.860 of us. The only marginalized group I'm a part 00:16:06.860 --> 00:16:10.000 of is guys without hair. So, but I still 00:16:10.000 --> 00:16:13.139 have a very strong case of impostor syndrome. When 00:16:13.139 --> 00:16:15.380 you get into a marginalized group and you might 00:16:15.380 --> 00:16:18.430 be more successful than some of your peers, you're 00:16:18.430 --> 00:16:20.279 afraid it might cause you to be outcast from 00:16:20.279 --> 00:16:22.370 that peer group that's one of the only safe 00:16:22.370 --> 00:16:24.010 places you have. One of the only places you 00:16:24.010 --> 00:16:24.630 belong. 00:16:24.630 --> 00:16:26.779 It's a scary thing. 00:16:26.779 --> 00:16:30.180 There's a couple things that make impostor syndrome more 00:16:30.180 --> 00:16:33.540 prevalent in technology than it is in other industries. 00:16:33.540 --> 00:16:36.089 One of those things is the vastness of the 00:16:36.089 --> 00:16:41.040 knowledge involved in being a technology worker. Most of 00:16:41.040 --> 00:16:42.790 us have heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect. It's this 00:16:42.790 --> 00:16:46.899 idea that unskilled people may not really be able 00:16:46.899 --> 00:16:48.430 to gage their level of competence. They may feel 00:16:48.430 --> 00:16:50.589 like they're more competent than they are because they 00:16:50.589 --> 00:16:52.399 don't know their gaps. 00:16:52.399 --> 00:16:55.459 We have the diametric opposite problem of that. We 00:16:55.459 --> 00:16:58.290 know every last one of our gaps. We know 00:16:58.290 --> 00:17:00.019 all the things that we don't know. We know 00:17:00.019 --> 00:17:01.790 all the things that we need to improve about 00:17:01.790 --> 00:17:07.279 ourselves. And we know how much we don't know. 00:17:07.279 --> 00:17:10.089 And, DHH alluded to this in his keynote, actually, 00:17:10.089 --> 00:17:12.789 when he talked about the impostor plexus. 00:17:12.789 --> 00:17:14.169 We spend a lot of time wondering if we're 00:17:14.169 --> 00:17:18.138 doing it right in software. But the definition of 00:17:18.138 --> 00:17:20.740 right is always moving around. It's very hard to 00:17:20.740 --> 00:17:23.089 track. And so it sets us up for this 00:17:23.089 --> 00:17:25.199 feeling where we're never doing it right. We're always 00:17:25.199 --> 00:17:27.000 two steps behind. There's always something else we need 00:17:27.000 --> 00:17:29.059 to know to be able to be accepted in 00:17:29.059 --> 00:17:29.740 our field. 00:17:29.740 --> 00:17:35.860 The other thing is peer scrutiny. Actors, scientists, college 00:17:35.860 --> 00:17:40.410 professors, musicians, artists, all have a hard time with 00:17:40.410 --> 00:17:42.890 impostor syndrome. And the thing all those professions have 00:17:42.890 --> 00:17:45.360 in common with us is this idea of peer 00:17:45.360 --> 00:17:47.950 scrutiny. We are always one code review away from 00:17:47.950 --> 00:17:49.960 somebody telling us that our work is crap and 00:17:49.960 --> 00:17:51.490 we are crap. 00:17:51.490 --> 00:17:54.140 And it's, it's a scary place to be. So, 00:17:54.140 --> 00:17:56.650 to cope with that fear, your brain starts dutifully 00:17:56.650 --> 00:17:58.500 preparing you for someone telling you that your work 00:17:58.500 --> 00:17:59.919 is crap by telling you that you're crap ahead 00:17:59.919 --> 00:18:03.500 of time. It's really helpful. 00:18:03.500 --> 00:18:05.160 The other thing we do is we compare the 00:18:05.160 --> 00:18:08.370 finished work of other people to our messy thought 00:18:08.370 --> 00:18:11.140 process. So you, you look at this library that 00:18:11.140 --> 00:18:12.450 you admire. You look at the code. You look 00:18:12.450 --> 00:18:13.820 at the structure. You look at the way it's 00:18:13.820 --> 00:18:16.240 organized. It's fantastic code. 00:18:16.240 --> 00:18:17.929 Then you look at your own code. But when 00:18:17.929 --> 00:18:20.270 you look at your own code, you have the 00:18:20.270 --> 00:18:22.000 back story of that code. You know how it 00:18:22.000 --> 00:18:24.540 came to be. You know what a struggle it 00:18:24.540 --> 00:18:27.380 was. So you assume this guy wrote this entire 00:18:27.380 --> 00:18:30.740 text file, beautiful library in one pass. But you 00:18:30.740 --> 00:18:32.690 know how the sausage was made on your code. 00:18:32.690 --> 00:18:35.020 And you know it wasn't a pretty process. So 00:18:35.020 --> 00:18:38.169 you're setting yourself up for failure in that comparison. 00:18:38.169 --> 00:18:40.510 You're never gonna come out ahead when you compare 00:18:40.510 --> 00:18:42.880 your thought process to somebody else's finished code. 00:18:42.880 --> 00:18:47.710 So how does this work out in practice? There 00:18:47.710 --> 00:18:52.250 are a lot of things that impostors don't do, 00:18:52.250 --> 00:18:58.540 because of impostor syndrome. We don't participate in conversations. 00:18:58.540 --> 00:19:00.860 We go to user groups. We tend to hide 00:19:00.860 --> 00:19:04.840 in the wings, right. Because if we hide, then 00:19:04.840 --> 00:19:06.250 we don't have to put ourselves out there. We 00:19:06.250 --> 00:19:08.710 don't have to let anybody see us and figure 00:19:08.710 --> 00:19:10.740 out that we don't know what we're talking about 00:19:10.740 --> 00:19:12.530 and shouldn't be where we are. 00:19:12.530 --> 00:19:16.260 We don't ask questions. It's hard for us to 00:19:16.260 --> 00:19:19.140 admit that we don't know something. We pretend like 00:19:19.140 --> 00:19:21.370 we know it. Fake it till you make it. 00:19:21.370 --> 00:19:23.280 And then we come back later and frantically scramble 00:19:23.280 --> 00:19:24.760 to try to learn the things that we don't 00:19:24.760 --> 00:19:28.070 know. So we write crappy code. We blindly adhere 00:19:28.070 --> 00:19:30.320 to best practices. We don't ask questions that would 00:19:30.320 --> 00:19:32.070 allow us to become somebody with a trained eye 00:19:32.070 --> 00:19:34.710 for code that actually knows how to apply those 00:19:34.710 --> 00:19:38.160 best practices well. 00:19:38.160 --> 00:19:39.870 And we all know that if you just blindly 00:19:39.870 --> 00:19:42.010 apply best practices, you're gonna end up with some 00:19:42.010 --> 00:19:44.380 code that's really pretty rough. But if you don't 00:19:44.380 --> 00:19:46.100 ask those questions, if you don't put yourself out 00:19:46.100 --> 00:19:48.510 there to admit that, yeah, you know what, I 00:19:48.510 --> 00:19:50.510 could learn to do this a little better, you 00:19:50.510 --> 00:19:53.880 don't grow. 00:19:53.880 --> 00:19:55.850 Impostors don't teach others. We don't give user group 00:19:55.850 --> 00:19:57.910 talks. We don't give convention talks. We don't help 00:19:57.910 --> 00:20:02.030 out at workshops. And the community is worse off 00:20:02.030 --> 00:20:05.440 for this. Brandon Hayes, in his talk this morning, 00:20:05.440 --> 00:20:07.210 alluded to the fact that everybody sitting in the 00:20:07.210 --> 00:20:08.929 audience has a talk that they could give. There 00:20:08.929 --> 00:20:11.720 is something out there that you know an awful 00:20:11.720 --> 00:20:14.650 lot about. Maybe more about than anybody else. But 00:20:14.650 --> 00:20:15.710 if you're afraid to get up in front of 00:20:15.710 --> 00:20:18.190 people and share that knowledge, the community is lacking 00:20:18.190 --> 00:20:21.960 that knowledge. The community is lacking your unique viewpoint. 00:20:21.960 --> 00:20:24.940 So impostor syndrome robs our community of some voices 00:20:24.940 --> 00:20:27.669 that would otherwise be very helpful and very insightful. 00:20:27.669 --> 00:20:30.320 Another thing impostors don't do is contribute to open 00:20:30.320 --> 00:20:34.770 source. I remember when I was a PHP developer 00:20:34.770 --> 00:20:38.010 in the first year of my software development career. 00:20:38.010 --> 00:20:40.080 I said something really stupid on the WordPress mailing 00:20:40.080 --> 00:20:42.500 list. It was something along the lines of WordPress 00:20:42.500 --> 00:20:46.799 isn't supported on Microsoft stack. Or something, I don't 00:20:46.799 --> 00:20:49.150 know, something dumb. And I got my rear end 00:20:49.150 --> 00:20:51.400 handed to me for it. 00:20:51.400 --> 00:20:54.929 And ever since that happened, I have been very 00:20:54.929 --> 00:20:57.500 hesitant to do anything of any significance in the 00:20:57.500 --> 00:20:59.750 open source world. And I have a feeling that 00:20:59.750 --> 00:21:00.679 there's a lot of people in the audience that 00:21:00.679 --> 00:21:02.340 that's true for, as well. Maybe you got bit 00:21:02.340 --> 00:21:04.510 one time. Maybe you're just afraid of getting bit 00:21:04.510 --> 00:21:08.070 by trying to contribute to open source. But it's, 00:21:08.070 --> 00:21:10.520 it's something that impostors don't do, because we're afraid 00:21:10.520 --> 00:21:14.070 of that rejection. We're afraid of that failure. 00:21:14.070 --> 00:21:15.320 The other thing impostors don't do is they don't 00:21:15.320 --> 00:21:18.120 change jobs. I mentioned I was a solo developer 00:21:18.120 --> 00:21:21.059 for the first chunk of my career. I was 00:21:21.059 --> 00:21:24.030 in that job for five years. And it was, 00:21:24.030 --> 00:21:25.380 it was a bit of a cushy position. I'll 00:21:25.380 --> 00:21:29.120 admit that. But by being a solo developer, I 00:21:29.120 --> 00:21:31.610 deprived myself of the chance of learning from other 00:21:31.610 --> 00:21:34.080 developers. And by the time I left that job, 00:21:34.080 --> 00:21:35.950 I was not making anything close to a market 00:21:35.950 --> 00:21:36.730 salary. 00:21:36.730 --> 00:21:39.690 But, as impostors, we kind of feel lucky to 00:21:39.690 --> 00:21:41.179 have the job we have and to have the 00:21:41.179 --> 00:21:43.640 people that are around us fooled. It seems like 00:21:43.640 --> 00:21:44.679 an awful lot of work to go take a 00:21:44.679 --> 00:21:46.120 new job and have to fool a new group 00:21:46.120 --> 00:21:48.919 of people, right? So we just sit where we 00:21:48.919 --> 00:21:50.360 are. 00:21:50.360 --> 00:21:54.669 So, clearly, these are not things that we want 00:21:54.669 --> 00:21:57.730 to happen in our community. So how do we 00:21:57.730 --> 00:22:00.160 patch our brains to get out of this cycle? 00:22:00.160 --> 00:22:02.360 Like I mentioned earlier, impostor syndrome, that cycle, it's 00:22:02.360 --> 00:22:03.929 kind of an infinite loop in your head. And 00:22:03.929 --> 00:22:05.620 you just have to find the places that you 00:22:05.620 --> 00:22:08.230 can hook into it so that you can get 00:22:08.230 --> 00:22:09.320 out of it. 00:22:09.320 --> 00:22:11.700 The good news is, is that for starters, knowing 00:22:11.700 --> 00:22:14.900 is half the battle. If you just understand that 00:22:14.900 --> 00:22:19.400 this thing that you feel, this pervasive sense of 00:22:19.400 --> 00:22:23.390 incompetence that you feel actually has a name. It's 00:22:23.390 --> 00:22:26.000 called impostor syndrome. You know how it's affecting your 00:22:26.000 --> 00:22:29.580 thoughts. You know how it's affecting your head. That's 00:22:29.580 --> 00:22:32.200 the first start of the road to recovery. I 00:22:32.200 --> 00:22:33.570 mentioned earlier, I've got an impostor survey, I'll give 00:22:33.570 --> 00:22:35.270 you the link at the end of the talk. 00:22:35.270 --> 00:22:38.299 It's derived from research from Dr. Clance. And it'll 00:22:38.299 --> 00:22:40.690 give you a numeric score. It'll help you sort 00:22:40.690 --> 00:22:42.360 of sort through some of the thoughts in your 00:22:42.360 --> 00:22:44.799 head and figure out if it's something that you're 00:22:44.799 --> 00:22:47.110 dealing with. 00:22:47.110 --> 00:22:48.690 So once you know what impostor syndrome is, the 00:22:48.690 --> 00:22:50.490 next thing is mindfulness. You have to start paying 00:22:50.490 --> 00:22:56.059 attention. And, I apologize, cause I know this is 00:22:56.059 --> 00:22:59.870 super cheesy, but I'm gonna do it anyway. I 00:22:59.870 --> 00:23:01.280 want you to turn to somebody next to you 00:23:01.280 --> 00:23:04.419 in the audience and pay them a compliment. If 00:23:04.419 --> 00:23:06.970 it's somebody you know well, make it as specific 00:23:06.970 --> 00:23:11.809 a compliment as you can. I'll wait. 00:23:11.809 --> 00:23:14.570 AUDIENCE: [chatter] 00:23:14.570 --> 00:23:21.570 N.M.: All right. All right, come on. Reeling it 00:23:26.990 --> 00:23:31.860 back in here. I wondered if this would happen 00:23:31.860 --> 00:23:33.610 on the last day of the conference, and it 00:23:33.610 --> 00:23:39.370 did. 00:23:39.370 --> 00:23:46.370 So, think back to when the person sitting next 00:23:47.250 --> 00:23:48.780 to you paid you that compliment. How did you 00:23:48.780 --> 00:23:53.450 react? Was your initial instinct to accept that compliment 00:23:53.450 --> 00:23:56.660 and take it at face value as true? Or 00:23:56.660 --> 00:23:58.860 was it to try to write it off. To 00:23:58.860 --> 00:24:01.700 try to find some way deflect it. Cause that's 00:24:01.700 --> 00:24:03.340 what we do as impostors, right? If somebody comes 00:24:03.340 --> 00:24:05.480 up and says hey, nice job. 00:24:05.480 --> 00:24:07.549 Oh, man, I was really lucky. It was an 00:24:07.549 --> 00:24:10.400 easy topic to talk about. That sort of thing. 00:24:10.400 --> 00:24:12.600 We tend to write it off. So you have 00:24:12.600 --> 00:24:14.370 to pay attention to how you accept compliments. You 00:24:14.370 --> 00:24:15.940 have to work to accept them gracefully. If you 00:24:15.940 --> 00:24:17.289 don't know how to do that, just say thank 00:24:17.289 --> 00:24:20.600 you. All you have to say. It's very hard 00:24:20.600 --> 00:24:23.850 work, and I am still terrible at it. 00:24:23.850 --> 00:24:25.640 The other thing you have to do, that you 00:24:25.640 --> 00:24:28.909 can do to help you find how this is 00:24:28.909 --> 00:24:31.400 happening in your head is to listen to yourself 00:24:31.400 --> 00:24:36.600 talk. See if you do a lot of self-deprecation. 00:24:36.600 --> 00:24:38.120 When you make a mistake in the code, you 00:24:38.120 --> 00:24:40.390 say, oh man, I'm an idiot. Or do you 00:24:40.390 --> 00:24:42.929 do, oh, I forgot a semi-colon. Not that we 00:24:42.929 --> 00:24:44.270 ever do that because we're Rubyists and we don't 00:24:44.270 --> 00:24:48.559 write JavaScript or anything. 00:24:48.559 --> 00:24:50.039 The next thing you have to do is accept 00:24:50.039 --> 00:24:54.650 your success. Accept your success. Trust reality, not your 00:24:54.650 --> 00:24:57.070 feelings. Brandon Hayes is a friend of mine from 00:24:57.070 --> 00:24:59.539 Austin, said this probably as eloquently as I've heard 00:24:59.539 --> 00:25:02.539 it said. He was talking about leaving a previous 00:25:02.539 --> 00:25:05.220 job and coworkers paying him compliments and saying nice 00:25:05.220 --> 00:25:06.220 things about him. 00:25:06.220 --> 00:25:08.480 And he said, you know, at some point, I 00:25:08.480 --> 00:25:11.309 had to stop the thought process in my head. 00:25:11.309 --> 00:25:12.980 And I had to try to find these things 00:25:12.980 --> 00:25:15.020 that people were saying about me inside myself. I 00:25:15.020 --> 00:25:18.250 had to find them as true. And it's hard. 00:25:18.250 --> 00:25:20.270 It's hard. You have to try to accept that 00:25:20.270 --> 00:25:22.900 compliments are true. You have to accept that nice 00:25:22.900 --> 00:25:24.880 things that people say about you are true, rather 00:25:24.880 --> 00:25:27.820 than immediately writing them off. Another way to practice 00:25:27.820 --> 00:25:29.720 that is to give more compliments. 00:25:29.720 --> 00:25:31.630 I mentioned sort of this idea of a zero-sum 00:25:31.630 --> 00:25:34.850 game, where it's, you have to be the shining 00:25:34.850 --> 00:25:38.039 star and you're worried about what happens when people 00:25:38.039 --> 00:25:41.100 on your team get compliments. Well, give more compliments. 00:25:41.100 --> 00:25:44.240 Notice the genuineness with which you deliver a compliment. 00:25:44.240 --> 00:25:46.860 If you notice how genuine you're being, start assuming 00:25:46.860 --> 00:25:49.770 other people are being that genuine as well. And 00:25:49.770 --> 00:25:54.530 they're not just deluded into thinking you're something you're 00:25:54.530 --> 00:25:56.000 not. 00:25:56.000 --> 00:25:58.950 You have to own your success. And even if 00:25:58.950 --> 00:26:01.610 your success involved a lot of luck and timing, 00:26:01.610 --> 00:26:03.240 you still had to be smart enough to use 00:26:03.240 --> 00:26:05.490 that luck and timing to your benefit. So even 00:26:05.490 --> 00:26:06.470 if you try to write it off as luck 00:26:06.470 --> 00:26:08.760 and timing, you still had something to do with 00:26:08.760 --> 00:26:09.049 it. 00:26:09.049 --> 00:26:12.000 You also need to be kind to yourself. Forgive 00:26:12.000 --> 00:26:17.210 your mistakes. If you notice yourself being very self-critical, 00:26:17.210 --> 00:26:21.020 interrupt yourself. Notice what you did well, in addition 00:26:21.020 --> 00:26:22.539 to what you feel like you need to improve 00:26:22.539 --> 00:26:23.210 on. 00:26:23.210 --> 00:26:25.650 My wife's a middle-school English teacher. And in her 00:26:25.650 --> 00:26:28.100 classroom, she practices something that she calls the compliment 00:26:28.100 --> 00:26:31.820 sandwich. When she has to deliver some bad news 00:26:31.820 --> 00:26:33.140 to a student or tell them how they need 00:26:33.140 --> 00:26:34.990 to improve their writing or, or something like that, 00:26:34.990 --> 00:26:38.500 she tells them first something they did really well. 00:26:38.500 --> 00:26:41.090 Then she delivers the improvement, and then she tells 00:26:41.090 --> 00:26:42.360 them something else they did really well. 00:26:42.360 --> 00:26:44.429 Well, if you start doing this inside your own 00:26:44.429 --> 00:26:46.409 head, what'll happen is you'll have to find something 00:26:46.409 --> 00:26:49.470 you did well. Then you can indulge in that 00:26:49.470 --> 00:26:52.620 self-criticism that feels so good to us. And then 00:26:52.620 --> 00:26:54.340 you tell yourself something else you did well. And 00:26:54.340 --> 00:26:56.980 over time, you'll notice that you start to notice 00:26:56.980 --> 00:26:59.600 your success more than the things that you wish 00:26:59.600 --> 00:27:02.370 you'd done better. 00:27:02.370 --> 00:27:04.700 Another technique you can use is to ratchet your 00:27:04.700 --> 00:27:09.039 freak-out. And I use this one a lot this, 00:27:09.039 --> 00:27:12.080 giving this talk. I mentioned that I moved into 00:27:12.080 --> 00:27:16.010 that fear and doubt and, cycle, pretty early on. 00:27:16.010 --> 00:27:18.429 Well, I made an agreement with myself that I 00:27:18.429 --> 00:27:20.470 was not gonna freak out until a week before 00:27:20.470 --> 00:27:23.880 the conference. 00:27:23.880 --> 00:27:26.990 And it actually worked pretty well. So, normally when 00:27:26.990 --> 00:27:28.679 I do something like this, I would freak out 00:27:28.679 --> 00:27:30.480 a long time in advance. I would start worrying 00:27:30.480 --> 00:27:32.140 about it and feeling like I wasn't gonna pull 00:27:32.140 --> 00:27:33.950 it off. But I made an agreement with myself 00:27:33.950 --> 00:27:35.840 that I wasn't gonna do that. And I sat 00:27:35.840 --> 00:27:38.120 on it for awhile. And a week before the 00:27:38.120 --> 00:27:40.190 conference. It actually worked. When it would come up, 00:27:40.190 --> 00:27:41.429 I would push it back down and say, you 00:27:41.429 --> 00:27:42.760 get to freak out a week before the conference. 00:27:42.760 --> 00:27:45.000 You don't get to freak out now. And then 00:27:45.000 --> 00:27:46.470 the week before the conference got here and, boy 00:27:46.470 --> 00:27:49.200 did I freak out. 00:27:49.200 --> 00:27:50.730 I stayed up till two in the morning most 00:27:50.730 --> 00:27:53.630 nights not doing much of anything, but feeling better 00:27:53.630 --> 00:27:56.100 because I was doing something. Like I was making 00:27:56.100 --> 00:27:57.760 progress on my talk. It was very much a 00:27:57.760 --> 00:28:01.520 coping mechanism. I wasn't accomplishing anything. But instead of 00:28:01.520 --> 00:28:03.840 doing that for a whole month, I only did 00:28:03.840 --> 00:28:04.990 it for a week. 00:28:04.990 --> 00:28:07.770 And the magic of this, is it lets you 00:28:07.770 --> 00:28:12.150 be successful without freaking out for a month. And 00:28:12.150 --> 00:28:14.779 so you start to break down that superstition that 00:28:14.779 --> 00:28:16.150 you have to do a lot of freaking out 00:28:16.150 --> 00:28:18.650 before you can be successful. You start to chink 00:28:18.650 --> 00:28:22.020 away at that bit by bit, until finally you 00:28:22.020 --> 00:28:24.520 become convinced that it's not as necessary, maybe, as 00:28:24.520 --> 00:28:26.350 you believe it is. 00:28:26.350 --> 00:28:31.470 Another thing is embrace vulnerability. Allow yourself to admit 00:28:31.470 --> 00:28:33.919 you don't know things and ask questions. If you 00:28:33.919 --> 00:28:35.740 don't know who that is in the background of 00:28:35.740 --> 00:28:38.470 that slide, it's Renee Brown. If you haven't seen 00:28:38.470 --> 00:28:41.529 her TED talk, The Power of Vulnerability, put that 00:28:41.529 --> 00:28:44.450 very high on your to-do list. 00:28:44.450 --> 00:28:46.900 I saw it probably two years ago, and it 00:28:46.900 --> 00:28:49.779 was the start of my journey out of impostor 00:28:49.779 --> 00:28:52.990 syndrome. Because it was the first time I'd really 00:28:52.990 --> 00:28:55.140 ever embraced the message that it was OK if 00:28:55.140 --> 00:28:57.070 I wasn't perfect. It was OK if I didn't 00:28:57.070 --> 00:29:00.510 know everything all the time. 00:29:00.510 --> 00:29:02.520 When you start embracing vulnerability, it frees you up 00:29:02.520 --> 00:29:05.000 to be yourself, and to be OK with that. 00:29:05.000 --> 00:29:09.100 To be OK with not knowing everything. And once 00:29:09.100 --> 00:29:11.480 you're comfortable with who you are, it gives you 00:29:11.480 --> 00:29:13.919 a much more solid foundation to build upon and 00:29:13.919 --> 00:29:16.500 to improve. Like, instead of trying to build on 00:29:16.500 --> 00:29:19.380 top of this shaky facade, you're building on who 00:29:19.380 --> 00:29:22.650 you actually are and what you actually know. 00:29:22.650 --> 00:29:26.220 In the process of embracing vulnerability, something you absolutely 00:29:26.220 --> 00:29:30.679 need to try is pair programming. I don't have 00:29:30.679 --> 00:29:32.250 a lot of time, but I will be more 00:29:32.250 --> 00:29:33.850 than happy to pair with any of you if 00:29:33.850 --> 00:29:35.190 I can find the time. Just ping me on 00:29:35.190 --> 00:29:36.159 Twitter. 00:29:36.159 --> 00:29:37.330 I'm lucky enough to be on a team that 00:29:37.330 --> 00:29:40.460 does pair programming 100% of the time. And what 00:29:40.460 --> 00:29:43.669 you find, a coworker said this to me right 00:29:43.669 --> 00:29:45.299 as I was walking in to give this talk. 00:29:45.299 --> 00:29:49.470 What you find, is that knowledge becomes collective. Not 00:29:49.470 --> 00:29:51.049 something that you have to bring to the table 00:29:51.049 --> 00:29:54.840 individually. So it's OK if you don't know everything. 00:29:54.840 --> 00:29:57.169 Your pair probably does. And there's no penalty for 00:29:57.169 --> 00:30:00.350 them knowing things and you not. 00:30:00.350 --> 00:30:02.409 But it also makes you be vulnerable enough to 00:30:02.409 --> 00:30:04.309 work with somebody. Because if you're pair programming with 00:30:04.309 --> 00:30:08.450 somebody, there is no hiding. And it's really the 00:30:08.450 --> 00:30:12.390 first dose of having an accurate basis of comparison 00:30:12.390 --> 00:30:15.120 for my work that I ever had. Working with 00:30:15.120 --> 00:30:18.090 somebody, seeing how they worked, seeing how I worked. 00:30:18.090 --> 00:30:19.429 Seeing how we did a lot of the same 00:30:19.429 --> 00:30:23.289 things and approached problems the same ways, convinced me 00:30:23.289 --> 00:30:25.409 that maybe I wasn't that bad a developer after 00:30:25.409 --> 00:30:26.529 all. 00:30:26.529 --> 00:30:30.100 But most importantly, you gotta keep going. You have 00:30:30.100 --> 00:30:34.429 to keep going. The hell of impostor syndrome is 00:30:34.429 --> 00:30:38.480 that you are never fully recovered from it. This 00:30:38.480 --> 00:30:40.740 pattern of thought is so deeply ingrained in your 00:30:40.740 --> 00:30:44.880 head that is very hard to escape from. So 00:30:44.880 --> 00:30:47.070 what you're working towards is becoming what I like 00:30:47.070 --> 00:30:51.380 to call a high-functioning impostor. 00:30:51.380 --> 00:30:52.580 I've alluded to the fact that I have been 00:30:52.580 --> 00:30:54.480 my own walking case study in the development of 00:30:54.480 --> 00:30:56.700 this talk. So, clearly I am not out of 00:30:56.700 --> 00:30:59.120 the woods. Clearly, I still experience most of these 00:30:59.120 --> 00:31:03.460 things on a very regular basis. The difference is, 00:31:03.460 --> 00:31:06.070 I can work through it enough to be able 00:31:06.070 --> 00:31:09.010 to get up and give a talk, or to, 00:31:09.010 --> 00:31:12.309 to ship code and know it's actually decent code. 00:31:12.309 --> 00:31:14.700 And everybody can do this. It's not that hard. 00:31:14.700 --> 00:31:17.000 You just have to start working through it and 00:31:17.000 --> 00:31:19.130 continue working through it and not giving up when 00:31:19.130 --> 00:31:21.600 it's hard and continue pushing against it. 00:31:21.600 --> 00:31:23.409 The last thing I want to leave you with 00:31:23.409 --> 00:31:27.179 is this. I talked about Dunning-Kruger effect earlier. The 00:31:27.179 --> 00:31:30.870 thing that you need to remember about impostor syndrome 00:31:30.870 --> 00:31:32.419 is you have a lot of very smart people 00:31:32.419 --> 00:31:36.190 around you saying very nice things about you. If 00:31:36.190 --> 00:31:39.750 you believe that these people are full of crap, 00:31:39.750 --> 00:31:42.570 then you're saying that they're not smart enough to 00:31:42.570 --> 00:31:45.460 see through you. They're not good enough at reading 00:31:45.460 --> 00:31:48.850 code to tell that your code is terrible. And 00:31:48.850 --> 00:31:50.240 these are also the people that serve as your 00:31:50.240 --> 00:31:52.240 basis of comparison. So you're looking around at all 00:31:52.240 --> 00:31:54.360 these people that are very smart, and these are 00:31:54.360 --> 00:31:56.070 the people that you feel like you might be 00:31:56.070 --> 00:31:57.460 inferior to. 00:31:57.460 --> 00:31:59.840 Well, you're saying these people that you, that you 00:31:59.840 --> 00:32:02.470 consider to be smarter than you are not smart 00:32:02.470 --> 00:32:06.039 enough to see through this facade. They are. And 00:32:06.039 --> 00:32:08.360 they're not, because there's no facade there. So the 00:32:08.360 --> 00:32:12.640 fact that you experience impostor syndrome pretty much means 00:32:12.640 --> 00:32:15.169 that you have no reason to experience impostor syndrome. 00:32:15.169 --> 00:32:17.020 It means you know enough about your skill and 00:32:17.020 --> 00:32:20.520 your craft to see your shortcomings and you just 00:32:20.520 --> 00:32:22.169 need to focus more on the things that you 00:32:22.169 --> 00:32:23.309 know and the value that you bring to the 00:32:23.309 --> 00:32:25.110 table. 00:32:25.110 --> 00:32:27.580 Give yourself credit for that and focus less on 00:32:27.580 --> 00:32:29.020 the things that you still have to learn. Because 00:32:29.020 --> 00:32:30.399 you have a long career ahead of you. You 00:32:30.399 --> 00:32:33.120 don't have to know it all now. 00:32:33.120 --> 00:32:33.559 Thanks.