Mind the tales you tell

Repeated stories tend to become true, even when they are jokes. Choose your jokes accordingly.

“Abstract, autobiography, excuses, story, narrative, voice.” / Don’t look too closely at those eyes though / Midjourney

The things you say about yourself matter. This is true even when those things are said in jest, and also when you only say them to yourself.¹

It is good and proper to have an opinion about what we are good at, and what we are bad at! But when we describe ourselves, we are also shaping ourselves, so we want to do this with great care.

Storytime

I’ve been wary of doing this in any of my articles so far, but to clarify what I’m trying to say, I think it’s time for a personal example. I invite you to skip ahead to the next divider if you just want the recipe without learning my whole life story.

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Since time immemorial (or maybe middle school), I had poor memory. I’d forget assignments, peoples’ names, and things I’d said. My mother suggested I write things down to mitigate this, so I wrote down the important stuff like homework assignments. It felt a bit too weird to write down “The guy who sits next to you in Spanish is named Steven” or “Today you told that great turtle joke.”² So I forgot those things, and joked that I could never remember them because “I don’t keep a journal,” and of course never started a journal so that I could keep using the joke.

This line worked as intended for lots of years. Seriously, like 15 of them! I don’t think I have any old friends who haven’t heard it. Whenever I forgot something, the narrative was strengthened; when I did remember something, it went unremarked. Since everyone knew I couldn’t be relied upon to remember names, they generously lowered their expectations accordingly.

A few years into my engineering career, my manager declined to lower their expectations. They asked “Have you ever thought about actually keeping a journal?” I gave a great list of reasons that wouldn’t be helpful or practical.

“Have you ever tried improving your memory?” I obligingly checked out a couple books they suggested on the topic (I liked books, and that manager), and decided that the techniques within were just not my cup of tea.

They didn’t push.

But my next manager pushed; that was their, ah, distinct style. They said “You often use that excuse to justify your mistakes or gaps in knowledge. Maybe you have a bad memory, or maybe you have a good one; I’ve seen plenty of evidence in support of both. But regardless of its truth, it is an excuse, and it colors your reputation. You would be more successful if you stopped using it.” I was offended, but also weirdly flattered that they thought it was possible for me to do this.

In the end, I didn’t even need a book. I just stopped saying I had a poor memory, and so it stopped being true to the people around me. I still forget plenty of things, just like everyone else.

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The crux of the issue is that, through the power of confirmation bias, repeated negative stories like mine usually become self-fulfilling prophecies.

I hear a wide variety of these when I talk to other engineers about their careers. Some of these tales come from a depressive mindset, like “I’m just not good at this.” Sometimes it’s a joke, like “I don’t keep a journal.” Sometimes it’s more accusatory, like “No one listens to my ideas.” Sometimes it’s situational, like “Being on-call always sucks.” Sometimes it’s sarcastic, like “Did you hear my covert narcissism I disguised as altruism?”³ And none of these stories are helpful!

In order to keep your stories out of this trap, they must be singular, scoped, or strategic.

Singular

There is incredible power in repetition. Even when unsupported by evidence, the phrases you casually toss around your home or office will inscribe themselves upon your friends’ and coworkers’ consciousness. Even when you repeat the stories to yourself, and even when you initially know they aren’t necessarily true, you will gain confidence in them merely by thinking them repeatedly.

So, if you spot a negative narrative that you want to rob of power, it must be viciously quashed wherever it appears.

“Shut it down, shut it down, forever.” / Dark City (1998)

Quashing externally is relatively straightforward: just don’t say it out loud. It’s hard to break a habit, so enlist your friends and family to call you out on it.

Quashing⁴ internally is much harder, but equally vital. Intercept the narrative when the thought appears in your brain. Identify the storyteller as Bob, not you. Find some evidence that runs contrary to the story (evidence, not proof; proof doesn’t exist) and print it out to hang on your wall. Speak the evidence out loud, and present an opposing narrative in opposition: “I remember why I made this design choice two years ago; I have a fantastic memory, not a poor one.”⁵

Alternatively, if this is a narrative that you want to empower through repetition, make sure that it doesn’t overreach by narrowing its scope.

Scoped

There are a few common missteps that I want to address here.

When you phrase the story as if it has ended or is permanent, you’re implying that the state of affairs cannot possibly improve. This is false; the story is unwritten, and the pen’s in your hand⁶. Leave open the possibility of change by saying “I’m still working on this” rather than “I’m bad at this,” and “That last on-call shift sucked” rather than “Being on-call sucks.” If there’s a pattern, identify it as a pattern, but never imply that the pattern is permanent: try “Being on-call is currently a full-time job.”

Similarly, “No one listens to my ideas” is an incredibly strong and surely incorrect statement. No people listen to any of your ideas? This might be scoped down to “I didn’t get much traction in my last two RFCs,” or “My manager tore apart my last PR review.”

Pare it down to pure fact. It’s good to recognize patterns, but be very explicit about what is fact versus feeling. “I feel like I’m struggling with this,” not “I’m not good at this.” Your intuition is valuable and worth sharing, but also fallible and worth disclaiming.

Be intentional about how and where you share each story. In a small group of people you’ve worked with, you have more space for authenticity and vulnerability. So it’s healthy to share your feelings with your manager in a 1-on-1… but in an all-hands post-mortem, stick more closely to the facts.

As an engineer, I suspect you’ve already identified a few edge-cases in my advice? Before you leave an angry comment explaining what I missed, let me discuss a broad category of what I’ll call strategic exceptions.

Strategic

This last one is a bit of an advanced technique: sometimes, it’s useful to carefully construct a story to achieve a specific goal, and that goal requires you to abandon scoping.

The first time you’ll want to do this is when you’re looking for a job. It’s OK to repeatedly call yourself an incredible, ambitious engineer in applications and interviews, even if (when?) you don’t really feel like one.

Later in your career, you’ll find that this sort of story is necessary to enact broad organizational change by motivating people towards some nebulous goal. Since different people respond to different narratives, you’ll want to craft and target your stories accordingly.

This is a big topic that I can’t totally cover in this article. Ok, now you can yell at me in the comments if you want me to write that article sooner rather than later, or if I missed your favorite example. Here’s a button!

A note on complaining

One common anti-pattern of these stories is the complaint. “I need to keep complaining about this issue to my team, or else we’ll never fix it.” This is valid, but when you raise such an issue, you want to be deliberate and intentional about it: how you phrase it, and who you’re talking to.

When you tell the story to people who are unable to get it fixed, all you’ve done is demoralize them, and diminish their faith in your team. Instead, if you have the ability and latitude to fix it, do that. If you need someone else’s support to get it fixed, petition them for that support. But repeated, unvarying complaints are not a petition, they are self-destructive noise.

How does it serve you?

To be clear, this is not a call to suppress⁷ your inner monologue from leaking out of your mouth. Heck, my last article endorsed authenticity! But there’s an important difference between admitting “I feel like I’m no good at this” to your manager when they check in on you, as opposed to declaring “I’m not good at this” when they ask what your blockers are. The former is a factual confession of your internal state, and the latter is an easy shield that obscures the real problems.

Stories have power, even when made in solitude or in jest. This isn’t magic, it’s just psychology⁸. Focus on how you want each of your stories and jokes to serve you. Identify which ones are constructive, and which ones are destructive. Repeat them accordingly, sculpt them carefully, and target them wisely.

1. I’ve heard this described by some as being impeccable with your word.

2. Remember the turtle joke for the party.

3. Accordingly, Taylor Swift never should have written her universally acclaimed and award-winning lead single Anti-Hero, since it surely amplified the insecurities she references therein. Hopefully, earning 17.4 million plays in its first 24 hours on Spotify was some consolation.

4. Sorry I can’t find any synonyms for “quash” that I like.

5. Or I made a lot of weird design choices.

6. Apologies to Natasha Bedingfield for the misquote.

7. Oh hey, I found a synonym for “quash” that I like!

8. Insert a meme of a wizard gesticulating and shouting “Magic Missile!” and then a demon says “Well, maybe if you repeat it every day for a few years.”