Assorted lessons of 2021

What follows is some thoughts/lessons/learnings I took away from this year.
And some things I hope to learn more of in the new year.

Working on weaknesses

I’ve always described myself as weak with math, and honestly I still would. But the label prevented me from trying to improve my math skills for years. I considered it a waste of time because I didn’t have a natural talent for it. It’s common wisdom that the greatest ROI in self-improvement comes from improving what you’re already proficient in. From Drucker’s “Managing Oneself”: “it takes far more energy and work to improve from incompetence to mediocrity than it takes to improve from first-rate performance to excellence.” This advice is great if your goal is to maximize ROI on self-improvement. But I think there is hidden value in working on weaknesses, even if you can’t turn weaknesses into strengths.

This year, I followed the OpenIntro Statistics textbook. Reading each chapter and completing and grading every exercise. I later applied linear regression to a project at work to great success.

I’m still bad at math. I essentially completed the equivalent of a first-year university statistics class—hardly a unique achievement. And it’s true that the ROI was low. I spent a lot of effort to become only slightly better at statistics. The real value gained was increasing my confidence in an area of weakness. I can engage in discussions on statistics, rather than avoid them entirely. I also increased my ability to learn (another Drucker favorite) by challenging myself to learn something outside my comfort zone. I expect that this will pay dividends across many other areas of my life, but not necessarily mathematics.

Ask the dumb questions

I heard this late in the year, but it has stuck with me since: “be the person to ask the dumb questions, because if you don’t, it’s possible nobody will.” The idea here is to assume nothing, because something could slip through the cracks if you, and everyone else, does.

I tried this on the first project I was tasked on at my new job. I suggested a blindingly simple solution, and was told “we tried that already.” But I wasn’t made to feel stupid for asking, in fact it was appreciated.

This idea acts primarily as a technique for avoiding painful extra work. And when supported by a group, it promotes unique dialog when problem solving. If everyone feels comfortable asking questions freely, you’ll iterate faster and get to the solution quicker.

Prioritize what they do, not what they say

I built a lot of projects at my previous job and these projects sometimes break for various reasons. I would start work on a fix, but naturally something would come up and the fix would be delayed, and delayed and delayed and…hey, shouldn’t someone be complaining about this by now?

While “letting things break,” probably requires some discretion when put into practice. I learned it’s a very powerful technique for discovering what projects are still delivering value. If nobody complains, nobody is using it, and there’s no value in fixing it.

More practically, try to prioritize based on what stakeholders do, not what they say.

Focus on people

Almost everything in life involves other people. If the majority of your focus is not on the people involved, you’re likely on a fast track to failure. I’ve worked with people who like to conceptualize what they do in a vacuum, either consciously or most commonly by ignoring the human elements that surround their work. This seems especially common in processes where there are rigid inputs and outputs (e.g. finance). Or in more technically-minded people, who expect the people around them to operate just like a machine.

Trying to understand other people and their complexities is hard! It’s often easier to narrow your focus to what’s in front of you and make assumptions about how others will act. But this creates rigidity in processes that may be inefficient, prevents the possibility of meaningful innovation through experimentation, and simply makes you a harder person to work with.

Going into 2022, emotional intelligence, and just simply trying to extend empathy and understanding with everyone I work with will be a major focus of mine.

Conclusion

That about wraps it up. As I step into my new job and the new year, there are a few of things I hope to gain.

In my new role, I’ll be working with more developers than ever before (designing architecture as well as coding). I want to focus on “playing nice” with them as much as possible. Both in the hard skills (git, documentation, clean code) but also the soft (describing “what” not “how”).

I’ll also be more client-facing than ever, so a focus of mine will be learning how to grow a client relationship to the benefit of my company and the client. To this end, I’ve already read The Art of Client Service by Robert Solomon, which I enjoyed very much.

Finally, I want to keep pushing myself in new directions—identifying new opportunities at work and allowing my career to grow in unexpected directions. Playing to my strengths may be the optimal path, but where’s the fun in that?