My manager asked us to write up our thoughts on remote work, as we have all experienced a form of it in this pandemic. I decided I wanted to share my thoughts more broadly. With some edits for a more general audience, the text below is what I sent out.

I have worked remotely either full-time or part-time for the last eight years. Prior to O.C. Tanner, I worked for Balsamiq, a software company based out of Italy, which was entirely remote. I have strong feelings about this topic and the implications it has.

tl;dr

Supporting remote work well requires and demonstrates high trust and is one of the best ways to recognize and treat employees respectfully as people. We should allow it.

Executive summary

We need to take this moment to thoughtfully consider how we can work best. Remote work is not the only answer; it is a compelling option that fits large parts of our company well, both in terms of our people and the work they do.

Colocated work has many benefits, and also serious challenges. Those challenges include defaulting to synchronous communication, selfish demands of immediate answers, reducing people to objects, cheapening in-person interactions, and providing an illusion of control or involvement.

Remote work encourages and facilitates many of the most important aspects of successful work. Those include respecting people as people, valuing and protecting the time and attention of others, communicating asynchronously most of the time and moving to synchronous when needed, and making important information and knowledge easily accessible.

The daily emails coauthored by our C.E.O. and HR leader throughout the pandemic are a fantastic example of connecting people asynchronously. They could be even better if not locked in our emails, but published in a company-accessible space, such as Confluence or Basecamp.

My hope is that we would institute a company policy of allowed remote work for designated departments, and in I.T. at least two days a week where everyone who is able is encouraged to work from home.

Full thoughts

Requirements for remote work

Remote work is not a good solution for everyone. To be a good fit depends mostly on personality and slightly on style and type of work. In order for someone to be well-suited for remote work, it is often ideal for them to possess the following characteristics:

• Honest and mature—able to work effectively without direct supervision
• Intrinsically motivated
• Capable of independent thought and work
• Not completely dependent on work for social interaction
• Disciplined and able to stop working when needed

Often, people get concerned that employees who work from home will shirk work and spend more time watching TV or attending to personal matters or taking naps. In most cases, the real problem with employees' work/life balance is that work encroaches on all other areas of life which leads to burnout. Generally, if leaders cannot trust their people to work, it does not matter where they are doing that work. If that is a concern of ours, I think it is a much bigger issue.

Often the best fit for style and type of work include some or all of the following:

• Creativity or problem solving
• Deep thought and consideration
• Individual contribution
• Occasional collaboration
• Information sharing or data transfer

Problems with colocated work

Not everything about colocated work is bad—there are many positives, and many benefits that come from this kind of work better than in any other way. As humans, we are designed to be social creatures, and processing the rich input stream of emotional and nonverbal communication that comes from being in person with someone is huge.

However, in a professional sense, there are many potential challenges. One of the first is that being physically close establishes a default of synchronous communication. This encourages shoulder-tapping, and fosters a culture of ASAP, where people become accustomed to getting answers immediately. At first glance, this may appear to be positive—we can seem to be more efficient, and in some cases, we truly are in the short-term. The insidious truth about this environment is that it is inherently selfish. Instead of seeing others as people, we see them as objects that exist to provide us with information or to get us unstuck when we feel the need. Instead of sitting in our own discomfort of not knowing something immediately, or searching it out ourselves, or just waiting until it is convenient and productive for the other person to respond, we place our own needs above theirs. This can lead to an almost unconscious perspective of viewing others as objects instead of people.

Another major problem with primarily colocated work is the cheapening of in-person interactions. I think many of us have noticed the inverse of this through our experience with the current pandemic. Because we have been isolated, those instances where we are able to be in person with someone are truly valued. Many people experience this as well when living away from family or friends—we often see loved ones less, but value the experience more. When I worked for a fully-remote company, we found this to be extremely true. We had an annual company retreat where we all gathered together for a week and a half, and would have mini retreats once or twice a years as smaller teams. Those times were special to build and strengthen relationships and create memories, and greatly enhanced our ability to work remote effectively.

The final problem with colocated work that I have seen is the illusion of control or involvement. For much of human history, there has been something seductive about being able to see people in order to know that they were behaving as we expected. In the workplace, we can, sometimes unconsciously, associate someone being at their desk as them working or being productive. This is a horrible measure of productivity. Again, it reduces people to objects, and tells them that their worth to the company is not the value they provide, but the hours they spend in a certain location. When this illusion is removed, it requires leaders to step up and discern how to measure the value that employees provide, both to track their productivity, and to help them grow as individuals.

How successful remote work looks

In my experience, when everyone is colocated, we think less about how successful work looks, but when we consider remote work, it becomes top of mind. I think we should take advantage of the situation we are in to consider how we could be more successful in general. I want to share my opinions on how successful work looks. It so happens that working remotely encourages these behaviors and characteristics.

The first and most important point is that people are respected as people, and their time and attention is valued and carefully protected. We all recognize and appreciate the value that each person provides, and take the time to learn how others work, and how we can best interact with them to respect and empower them. In practice, this often looks like waiting more often. Instead of demanding that people stop what they are doing in order to deal with us and our needs, we carefully consider first whether we actually need to interrupt them. If we determine that it is necessary, we do so in a way that allows the person to continue what they are doing, and respond when it is convenient for them. Inversely, we respect the requests from other people, and respond as quickly as appropriate. If we are in a position or a role where we need to provide more time-sensitive information, we respect others by checking more regularly to see if there are requests to which we need to respond.

A related principle is that we communicate asynchronously most of the time, and move to synchronous when needed. There are situations, such as debates, or final decisions, that can be done more effectively and efficiently in a synchronous manner. Those are often best facilitated by prior asynchronous communication, where everyone involved was able to consume and process the relevant information on their own time, and were able to take the time to dive as deep as needed in order to understand it sufficiently to make a sound decision. In many cases, I have seen that the act of taking time to write out your thoughts on an issue helps to crystallize and distill those thoughts. All of this leads to better thought and better decisions.

That leads to my final point, which is that information needs to be recorded in a way that is easily findable. Often, this means in some kind of shared location that is organized well so that it is easily browsable and searchable. When conversations, or worse decisions, are scattered across many different mediums, or trapped in email or verbal conversations, we drastically reduce access to that information. This decision, whether made consciously or unconsciously, prevents transparency and excludes people. Those affected include current employees who are not involved, and especially all future employees. Making this wealth of knowledge and information available is another form of respect.

Conclusion

We will rarely have the opportunity that has been forced on us by this pandemic to re-evaluate the basic ways in which we operate and work together. It would be a tragedy if we did not leverage what we have seen and learned through this experience. One point that has been made repeatedly is that many parts of the company have actually become more productive during this time. I think it is easy for us to gloss over the significance of that fact. Our lives have been severely disrupted. The level of uncertainty we have all experienced is unprecedented in most of our lifetimes. We have not actually been working remotely—we have been surviving a crisis, and forced to cope in whatever way we can. For some people to have become more productive during this time speaks volumes to the potential of remote work, especially if it is approached thoughtfully and done deliberately. Not everyone will choose to work remotely, and I think it would be a mistake to force them to do so. It is not the best fit for everyone. But neither is colocated work. We should respect our people enough to be flexible and open to the way in which they can best work.

To succeed in working remotely, our leaders will have to step up. One of the most beautiful examples of that throughout this pandemic is the daily emails coauthored by our C.E.O. and HR leader. I have heard from so many people who have been encouraged and uplifted and have felt more connected to each other and to the company through those message. In some ways, it is sad that it took a crisis like this for us to start reaching out to the whole company in that way. It also seems unfair to me that one or two people seem to have carried so much of that burden. My one wish is that those touching messages were not trapped inside email. How helpful and inspiring it would be to have all of those messages preserved somewhere like Confluence or Basecamp where everyone could still be notified of them, but have them archived and available for reference and future employees. (Note: I realized nothing was stopping me from doing exactly that, so I have copied and pasted the emails in a Confluence page).

I strongly hope that we will take this opportunity to consider how best to work. I would love to be involved in exploring what that could look like, and thrilled to share my experience working remotely.

Recommendation

Based on all that we have seen, I suggest that we institute a policy of allowed work for designated departments. There are obviously some groups, such as Manufacturing, Security, Maintenance, and others who cannot work remotely. But for those groups who can, such as Client Success, Marketing, I.T., and others, I think we should just give everyone in those departments full permission to work remotely if they want. Individuals teams will naturally establish norms of communication and schedules of synchronous time, including in person if needed. We should demonstrate to those people, and to the company that we trust them. If there are problems, those should be dealt with individually, and others should not have their flexibility curtailed as punishment.

Further, in I.T. we have seen that synchronous communication when remote is most effective when most people are in the same situation. I think that we should encourage everyone who can in I.T. to work remotely on designated days, such as Tuesday and Thursday. It would be even better to designate one of those days as a no-meeting day and work to truly protect the quiet work time that is needed for I.T. success.

In my job as a software engineering manager, I was recently asked to speak about leadership. As I prepared the presentation, I realized that this topic is a passion of mine, even rivaling my passion for mental health awareness. I will share my thoughts over a series of articles.

Leadership is a complex idea that means different things to different people. Often, we are thrust into roles in which we are expected or required to lead others. Many of us find these situations uncomfortable and find ourselves unprepared to take up the mantle laid upon us.

At the same work event where I presented, Niel Nickolaisen, our CIO at O.C. Tanner, gave the most concise definition of a leader I’ve ever heard:

A leader is someone others choose to follow

One thing that I love about this definition is how it highlights that anyone can be a leader regardless of role. We often think that leadership equates to having a position of authority, but this is a limited view. All of us can be the type of person whom others want to and actually decide to follow. Because of this universal applicability, I feel that the idea of good leadership is important and worth exploring further.

As I worked on my presentation, I was helped immensely by my good friend Jessica DuHadway. She asked many clarifying questions and even agreed to rework some of the content and co-present with me. In this writing, I went back to the topics as I had developed them to make sure I wasn’t stealing her words or ideas.

Articles

(Each title will be a link when the article is published)

Leading through trust

As a leader, your most important commodity is trust. Every action you take, every word you say, every success you notice or ignore affects the trust others have in you.

A leader’s role: protect

In my opinion, the most important functions a leader fulfills is to protect and provide. There are many ways in which a leader can do those, and I will first explore how a leader can protect people, the team, and the company.

A leader’s role: provide

I believe that the most important roles a leader must serve are to protect and provide. I want to explore this further by considering how a leader can provide support, clarity, and results.

Stages of leadership

Most people transition through three stages of leadership, whether consciously or not. These stages are the cruel tyrant, the benevolent dictator, and the servant leader.

Effects of stages

Leadership permeates our lives. Good leadership has the ability to uplift, just as poor leadership corrodes. We will consider the effects in terms of team makeup, team perspective, and team health.

I have long nursed a secret desire to do stand-up comedy, although I have allowed my fears to hold me back from trying. I finally made the attempt as part of my OCD recovery, and enjoyed the experience.

As I got close to the end of my treatment at the OCD & Anxiety Treatment Center, I was pushing myself to do more activities in which I risked something. I have long wished that I was funny, but I have come to grips with my lack of natural humor. As I wrote earlier this year, I am not destined to become a stand-up comedian. And that’s ok. I decided that I should try stand-up comedy and risk not being the best. Since I was nearly guaranteed to not be the best, it seemed like a productive thing to risk.

At first, I just suggested to one of my co-workers that I could do my routine for him. He asked who else I was inviting, and I realized that inviting more people would definitely increase the risk level, which was the whole point. So I ended up inviting our entire I.T. department to come over lunch, but only about 20 people came. So the next week, I volunteered to do it again for a full department meeting. That meeting was recorded, so I have a record of my attempt. It went better than I feared, and I decided I would share the video.

A month of intense reading led to rediscovered relationships with a number of old friends.

At the beginning of August, I decided to pick up a series that I started when I was a teenager: The Sword of Truth by Terry Goodkind. I have often enjoyed fantasy as a genre, and wanted to read something purely enjoyable instead of informative and educational. More than with most books, the characters of this series draw me in, and I wanted to read more to spend more time with friends that I have not seen for years.

One interesting phenomenon that I noticed as I got back in to these books is my tendency to lose myself. I have always loved to read, and can often get lost in a book. Stopping to eat, or sleep, or work can feel like a chore. Previously, I had never understood this part of myself. But now that I have gone through my journey of discovery and recovery with OCD, I recognized exactly what it was. In addition to the character friends I spent time with, this last month has been a close time with my old friend of OCD.

Now that I know how OCD feels in my life, it is easier to recognize his presence when he shows up. One of his defining characteristics is a total domination of my mind. That manifests in the cracks of my life. In every spare minute, my mind immediately jumped to my books, and in many of my spare minutes, my eyes jumped to my Kindle, or the app on my phone.

When I finished the first book, there was a definite sense of familiarity, as if I was returning to a comfortable state in which I had lived much of my life. As the month drew on, I realized that I was not happy with the effects this state was having on the rest of my life. I wrote recently about changing my toilet time to reading instead of playing a game, but now that I was compulsively reading my books, I was just as absent from the family.

As I wrapped up the series, it provided a natural moment to pause and evaluate. There is a delicate balance to be struck here. On the one hand, I love reading, and enjoy losing myself in a story, completely inhabiting another world, and making new friends. On the other hand, I do not want to feed the OCD side of my brain, and want to make sure that I remain in control of deciding how to spend my time. The month of August was not a complete loss—I was able to engage in a number of important events and activities. The most monumental of those was the birth of a new baby girl in our family, which was a magical experience.

I feel good about where things are at right now, and hope to remember to regularly introspect and maintain balance. Living with OCD is a constant exercise in managing tension, and I expect this to continue moving forward. The more I learn about myself, the better equipped I am to make informed choices about my life.

A series with an inside look at the effects of mental illness and the way that I have made sense of it in my life.

Introduction/disclaimers

For a couple months, I have wanted to write about my mental health, and the different disorders or symptoms that I have faced. I continue to improve, and am currently working in an intensive outpatient program for my OCD. In a glorious cycle, as I become better at facing my mental illness, I am able to be more objective and detached about my experience, which helps me face and handle it better. So, while I do hope that sharing my experience can be helpful for others to recognize what they may be facing, this is primarily a selfish series in which I want to better understand myself and what I’m going through.

This is further a selfish series because I want to capture the current state of my thoughts around mental health. I can already feel myself bending and changing in my treatment. I know that I will progress and see things, including myself, differently as I move forward. Writing my experiences now preserves this fragile part of my mind, just like a before picture. I do not know if this is a series I will revisit in the future, but I already want to read it again in six months when I am a different person.

My mind requires me to issue a few disclaimers. I am not a mental health care professional. Essentially, I don’t know what I’m talking about. I may mix up terminology. I will almost certainly speak about disorders and symptoms incorrectly. I come to this as a fellow traveler on the road to discovery, seeking merely to share my observations of the journey, not as a sage atop the mountain of mastery and understanding. I do not speak definitively on any of these topics. Instead, I speak highly subjectively of my experience with them. If this is triggering for you, leave it. If it is offensive to you because of how wrong I am, I apologize. Try your best to let it go. If it is helpful to you, find a way to pay it forward and extend care and compassion to people in your life. I take no responsibility for what you will do with what I say. I simply seek to share my story.

Articles

• What anxiety feels like
• What depression feels like
• What physical panic attacks feel like
• What mental panic attacks feel like
• What OCD feels like
• What intrusive thoughts feel like

Conclusion

Writing this series has been a wonderful experience for me. I have found the process to be therapeutic as I confront different dark realities of my mind and shine light on them. It has also been helpful to get concrete examples to better understand what I am experiencing. When I notice certain feelings in my body, I can now recognize them more easliy. As they have become more familiar, they have lost some of their danger and mystique.

I mentioned in my microblog post that this has been my best writing. As I alluded to, I mean that in a couple senses of the word. First, I feel the most proud at having written this series. It was deep and meaningful to me, and I felt vulnerable in sharing these private thoughts and experiences, and I celebrate that. This is the kind of writing I want to do more of. Second, this was immensely helpful to me to process and concretize my perceptions. I understand myself better, and feel a little more self-compassion.

Everyone has been or will be touched by mental illness. My hope is that we can have a more open and honest conversation about our experiences. Only in this way can we encourage the people we love (including ourselves!) to get the help that we so desperately need. I am so grateful for the support structure I am blessed to enjoy, particularly for my wife. And I hope that I can help others and pay forward some of what I have received.

Instead of ordering the best value, order the size you actually want.

I imagine that my experience is similar to yours. When I go to order food, I am mentally doing a quick calculation between the different sizes to identify the best value. If 20oz is only 50¢ more than 16oz, it is nearly impossible to order the smaller size. Even when I actually want the smaller size.

This leads to many different problems. Instead of being satisfied with my order, I have to choose between eating to discomfort, or grappling with the feeling of having wasted food. Often times, I will eat more than I wanted so that I am taking full advantage of the great value that I got.

I remember a particularly poignant example of this when eating at Smashburger one day. They were having a promotion on the Triple Double which made it even cheaper than the regular burger. I did not actually want that much meat, but I felt compelled to order the bigger burger for cheaper. My friend came behind me and ordered the same burger, but asked for only a single hamburger patty. I was struck by the brilliancy of his solution. That had never even crossed my mind.

As I have been on my healing retreat, I have seen a few movies in the theater. I used this as an opportunity to practice the new approach I wanted to take. It is a real challenge for me to pay $4 for a smaller bucket of popcorn, when the large is $5 and comes with a free refill. The thing is, I can never eat that much popcorn without getting sick. So I have forced myself to order the smaller size and stop worrying about the value I am missing out on. And I have enjoyed my movies much more with just the right amount of popcorn.

There are many situations in life when we make choices based on the perceived value of the options. Instead, we need to become more comfortable with ourselves, and more aware of our desires. And then be willing to act based on what we actually want, not what we think we should want. This is a much happier, and more comfortable, way to live.

It is important to acknowledge and validate your own suffering irrespective of its intensity relative to the suffering of someone else. You don’t have to suffer the most in order to have suffered.

It can be a real challenge to allow yourself to have a hard time. All too often, even in the midst of struggling, you say to yourself, “I know someone else has it worse.” While that may be true, it is not usually helpful or healthy.

I think that people who struggle with mental health issues are particularly prone to fall into this trap. I hear many people on my new favorite podcast, The Hilarious World of Depression, minimize their own struggles and say that others have a much harder time.

This is a cognitive distortion—a mental trap that has the effect of trivializing your experience. It actually doesn’t matter at all if someone else has suffered the same, or less, or more than you. If you are suffering, let yourself suffer. Acknowledge that it is hard. Validate your experience. Treat yourself with compassion.

This can be much easier to see when framed in the context of someone else, instead of yourself. Imagine this scenario. A friend comes to you and describes a situation that is causing her anxiety and stress. You listen carefully, and after she has broken down crying and shared everything with you, you respond, “I know someone who has it much worse than you. You ought to be grateful you don’t have it as bad as she.”

How would your friend feel in that moment? Instead of offering sympathy and compassion, you have made her feel insignificant and worthless. You have not validated her or the experience she is having.

When I think of this example, I have a visceral reaction. I cannot fathom doing that to someone else. And yet, I do it to myself all the time. All. The. Time.

My hope is that in thinking more about this, I can remember to treat myself with kindness and compassion. I urge you to do the same. We are all in such need of this.

tl;dr Hi, I’m Ben, and I have OCD. 👋

I am not gay. I am happily married to the woman of my dreams, and we have six wonderful children. My coming out is of an entirely different nature. Hopefully no one who is gay is offended at my co-opting the phrase “coming out”—it felt the most appropriate for the emotional struggle I have found in coming to terms with this huge part of my life and my identity.

There is no one label that defines who I am. But I have realized that having OCD has defined a great deal of my life to this point. It feels like a big step to be able to finally acknowledge that, both to myself and to others. So, today I am announcing that I have obsessive-compulsive disorder, along with generalized anxiety disorder and panic disorder.

Having vs. being

When I first starting writing this post, I wrote that I am OCD, but as I kept writing, it felt better to change it to say I have OCD. That minor change in language represents a major change in my mindset, and one that I hope to preserve, or at least to come back to again and again. This issue (or any other!) does not define me, but it is something that I carry and has shaped my experience.

Some background

I grew up a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and that continues to be an integral part of my life. Like in many Christian faiths, we were taught about faith and works. “Faith without works is dead” (James 2:26). Unfortunately, our culture, both in my church and in my family, was one of absolutes as well as black and white thinking. Every choice was righteous or evil. Every decision brought me closer to Satan or the Savior. There was no room for gray.

In this world, I thrived. I embraced black and white and one of my favorite scriptures was Revelation 3:16, “So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.” By no means was I perfect. But I sure tried. And when I failed, I made sure that I knew it loud and clear. In many ways, I was not alone in ensuring this. When I brought a report card home with six A’s, and an A-, I knew the reception would be, “What’s wrong? Why did you get an A-?” That became the voice inside my head.

Unwittingly, I pushed myself harder and harder, and further and further into a dark place. Part of the problem was that not only was my behavior not seen and understood as unhealthy, but it was rewarded and reinforced. Years passed and I met an amazing woman, and somehow she agreed to marry me, and we started a family. I worked hard to be a good husband and father. More accurately put, I berated myself for every shortcoming when I was not a perfect husband or father.

My journey

Last April, I had the good fortune to attend the Peers Conference in Austin, Texas. On the first day, we participated in breakouts that were like group therapy sessions. I shared some of my thoughts and feelings about work, and the dissatisfaction I was feeling, and the facilitator suggested that my concerns had nothing to do with work. He suggested that I find a counselor, particularly one who shared my faith and understood that part of my life. I was taken aback—counseling was not something I had ever considered before.

Over the summer, I began to see a chiropractor for the first time. I then experienced my first panic attack, and was referred to a fantastic therapist by my chiropractor. After the first visit, I told my wife, “It’s like speaking with a skilled friend.” My therapist saw through me and could identify so many of my smokescreens and crutches. As we ended the first session, she said (I’m paraphrasing a bit because I don’t remember her exact words), “You do not have perfectionistic tendencies as you suggested. You are a violent perfectionist and it is damaging you and your relationships.”

Part of the challenge for me was in accepting that my OCD is different than what I expected. I don’t have to turn the lights off twenty times. I don’t have to wash my hands endlessly (unless, of course, I get something on them!). One of my favorite TV shows is Monk. I identified with so much of what he feels and says. But at the same time, I found my own situation to be so different than his that I felt sure that this is not what I have.

As an aside, my wife and I were in the middle of rewatching all eight seasons of Monk when I experienced my first panic attack and started seeking help, and we decided that I had better take a break until I feel less suggestible. 😂

As I met with a psychiatrist and started medication, I experienced the onset of panic disorder. We experimented with medication, and I am on my fourth try and finally starting to feel some relief. As my therapist has helped me see, part of the challenge with OCD is that it works…until it doesn’t. I have developed compulsions and coping mechanisms that are so ingrained that I don’t even recognize them as such yet. But the journey has begun.

My current state

I would like to think that I hit rock bottom a couple weeks ago. After a day with three panic attacks, and some unsafe thoughts, I admitted myself to a crisis center for a night to make sure that I was stable and safe. Since that point, I have continued to improve. I am surrounded by loving and caring people who have given me unconditional support.

Some days, all that support makes it worse. I told a support group this week that each new relationship feels like another chance to let someone down. But I have come to accept that.

The truth is that I will let people down. I am not enough. The beauty is that I don’t have to be. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is so much more important and impactful than the culture in which I grew up. I don’t have to be enough because I have a Savior who is enough. That teaching got lost for me somewhere along the way, and I still struggle to hold on to it. But I have hope.

Looking forward

Some of my fantastic support comes from people at work. My boss and HR leader suggested that I consider taking some time off to heal, which I have done. So I am on extended leave from work. I have stepped back from my volunteer church assignment. I am getting more counseling and starting to take steps toward healing.

I am a long way from better. But I finally realize and accept that. It took me a while to get to this point, but I am now fine telling anyone about my situation. It is no longer a badge of shame. And it is certainly not a failure.

I am Ben, and I have OCD.

And that’s ok.

P.S. I have tagged this post with an emoji: 💮. I plan to post occasionally about my state or my progress and will use this emoji to identify mental-health related posts. This should make it easy to find the ones that you might want to read (or skip!).

I really liked this note on Emojipedia, which is why I chose it:

The Apple artwork contains Japanese text on the inside that translates to mean “Well Done” or “You did very well”.

It might not be the perfect emoji for this purpose, but that is beautiful in its own way. I need to embrace a little imperfection in my life.

I posted recently an experience that I had with my son:

At church today, my six-year-old handed me a piece of his toy and asked me to fix it. After trying for just a bit, I handed it back to him. He looked at it and asked, “Daddy, did you do your best?” Then he looked up at me intently and asked again, “Did you do your best?”

At the time, I laughed a bit at his intensity, but his two questions have continued to play in my mind. The second question communicates a level of challenge. It forces me to self evaluate and decide whether I really did give my best effort. It pushes me to keep going if I have the nagging suspicion that I could do more.

This question, by itself, is something of a double-edged sword. We all need motivation to keep going when our enthusiasm is flagging. In today’s world however, there never seems to be a lack of this kind of motivation. Everywhere we turn, there is something telling us to give 110% or to dig deep and push through. The problem comes when this starts to resonate with the voice of self-doubt and self-criticism that all of us have inside. If instead of hearing, “You should give your best effort,” we hear, “You are failing to give your best,” we are going to end up in a cycle of self-loathing and despair.

That is why his first question was so important. On the surface, it may seem that they were the same question. They were the same words after all. But the first question conveyed so much trust and hope. It wasn’t just, “Make sure you do your best!” It was also, “I’m sure that you did all you could. It’s ok to not complete the job all the way if you gave it all you had.” The part that was so meaningful to me as I reflected on the situation was that the trust was so automatic. His incredulity kicked in after a brief second, and he wanted to see if I just gave up or if I really did all I could. But his initial reaction felt like one of trust and acceptance.

As I’ve thought about this experience, I’ve wondered what life would be like if we all encountered these questions regularly. What if the first reaction to anything we did was acceptance and trust that we gave it our all, and a quiet assurance that our best is acceptable? That implied confidence makes it so much easier to face up to the second question with a straight back and square shoulders. We can look ourselves in the mirror, or look our questioner in the face, and be honest. If we have given less than our best effort, we are willing to re-engage and do more.

My hope is that I can provide more of those experiences to those around me, particularly those who are closest to me. My children need to feel an immediate acceptance and trust from me. They should know that they are enough. Just as they are. No changes needed. They should also know that I expect them to keep striving; to push themselves to do their absolute best. But all along the way, they are loved and accepted. And so am I.

I have traditionally been big on setting goals, and have enjoyed thinking of plans for the new year. This year, I want to try something totally different.

The past

In the past, I have often set goals in each of the different areas of responsibility in my life. I have preferred to set goals that had a clear achievement moment, and have favored goals that were easier to put in my task manager. This provided a nice sense of accomplishment when I completed a goal and checked off the list, and I felt like they motivated me to be and do better.

2018 has been a year of significant personal discovery for me. One major thing that I have learned is that I am exceedingly hard on myself, and tend to view the world in black and white. Combined with my natural goal-setting, this has had the unforeseen consequence of setting myself up for repeated and measurable failure. It is very easy to get down on myself when I can review my goals and clearly see which ones I have not yet completed. And sadly, I have realized that this is much more common and instinctual for me than celebrating my successes.

The present

So for 2019, I instead want to focus on general principles that I want to incorporate more fully in my life. A key aspect of my plan is to intentionally embrace vague and fuzzy goals. I hope this will have a couple effects. One is to help me get more comfortable with ambiguity and living in the grey. Not everything can or needs to be clearly defined and articulated, and I need to sensitize myself to this reality. Another effect I hope for is to remove the possibility of marking these complete, or of identifying them as unfulfilled. With each goal, there will be a spectrum, and I hope to nudge myself in the direction of identifying what I have done, and looking at where I can still go.

Essentially, I am trying to let go of expectations and approach myself with curiosity.

The goals

1. Be intentional

It is far too easy to allow life to happen to me, and I want to instead be more deliberate in my choices. Eventually, I want this to include deciding what I want to do on my phone before opening it, and then doing just that, and turning it off again. This could look like weekly and daily planning, although it might not. This might include task lists, but it also might not. This could look like deciding I am spend an evening playing Breath of the Wild, or it might not. This will hopefully mean sometimes setting everything of mine aside and just being present with my wife or with my kids.

2. Be present

When I feel overwhelmed, the natural reaction is to withdraw from the moment and numb, typically with something on my phone. This goal doesn’t mean that I will never be on my phone, but in keeping with my first goal, I want to decide that is want I am going to do, and then do it completely. I don’t expect to be perfect at this, especially at first, but I hope to explore ways in which to practice being present. One major area of focus is to be present with my own thoughts and feelings and not run away from them. I need to get to know myself better.

3. Be curious

So much of dissatisfaction is due to a mismatch in expectations and reality. Often, I cannot control reality, but I can start to adjust my expectations. My hope is to develop the skill of letting go of expectations entirely, and just observing what happens. When built upon the first two goals, my hope is that this will allow me to be in any moment and situation and just be. Be authentic. Be genuine. Be me. And by doing this, I will come to know more and more of who I truly am—not who I have projected that I should be.

The future

I have such an amazing support structure in my life. My wife is kind and understanding and supportive, and I couldn’t ask for more in a partner. We will continue to improve our relationship and communication and tackle all of life’s challenges together. My children love me intensely; almost too much at times, bordering on hero worship. I need to remember that they love me as I am right now, and stop worrying about letting them down. We are blessed to live close to loving extended family, and I have a great job. Our church community is a great support and opportunity for selfless service. I am allowing myself to get the help that I need.

All in all, the future is bright. I look forward to a more relaxed and enjoyable year. Stress will come, but as I am intentional, present, and curious, I will respond as best I can.

Since deciding that I wanted to change careers to become a full-time developer, I have started listening to a number of podcasts. Some of my favorites are Under the Radar, the spiritual successor to my previous favorite Developing Perspective, Core Intuition, and Release Notes. There are many others that I have enjoyed off and on, including the Accidental Tech Podcast and The Talk Show, as well as some new ones I am loving, such as Runtime and Canvas. I am not sure how many hours of podcasts I have listened to, but I know that Overcast has saved me an extra 46 hours from Smart Speed alone, if that tells you anything.

One of the interesting things about listening to podcasts is that you spend hours and hours listening to someone share their thoughts and feelings on issues that are important in your life. You start to feel as if you know these people from having spent so much time with them. And since most friendships come from spending time together, you begin to feel as if you are friends.

But there is a problem.

The person on the other end of this relationship does not know you at all. They have no idea that they have spent countless hours with you. From their perspective, there is no relationship.

I had an experience recently where I was on the other end of this phenomenon. In addition to my day job as an iOS developer, I work at DevMountain, a coding bootcamp here in Utah, teaching iOS development. Many of the lessons that I have given were recorded, and current students watch those recordings as part of their curriculum. Over the past few weeks, I have had a few students come up and talk to me. They both said something to the effect of, “I feel like I know you from watching all your videos.” I had to chuckle when I realized that I had an lopsided relationship with these students.

My mind was taken back to WWDC 2015, when I had the chance to meet _David Smith, the man behind Developing Perspective. We got to chat for just a minute, and I told him how much his podcast and his willingness to share what he has learned have helped me in my own development career. It was a highlight of the conference for me.

Caleb Hicks, David Smith, Joshua Howland, and me

From these difference experiences, and from talking with other people, I have some thoughts about how to handle meeting someone with whom you are in one of these lopsided relationships. If you are on the side that believes that you are friends, start with a brief statement explaining how you know the other person. That can go a long way to alleviate an otherwise awkward encounter. If you are on the oblivious side, do your best to make the other person feel comfortable. Recognize that the person who is meeting you feels vulnerable and probably a little intimidated. If you are both introverted developers, chances are neither of you are particularly good at interpersonal interactions, so you will both be awkward together, and that is ok.

However these relationships form, they can turn into real, meaningful relationships with just a little effort. Almost everyone who produces work that you admire is just a normal, friendly person and would appreciate you saying a kind word letting them know what you appreciate about them. Next time you see someone in a lopsided relationship with you, go up and introduce yourself!