191–200 of 401 posts
I discussed this with a good friends who pointed me at this stuff about phases of adult development:
http://www.slideshare.net/mobile/MargoBoster/how-being-an-ex...
I am literally facing this at work. One of my colleague has an opinion on everything. Its quite frustrating because he is neither the most experienced person in the topic nor is he any good. I literally caught him using an if else statement for check whether a dictionary contained a key when one line would have done. Its programming 101, pick up a book and you will learn it in chapter 3. But he goes on saying he has 5 years in this industry... I am like okay bro. How he got a job is beyond me.
In the end, kindness is a tool in EQ. You should use it when needed and be stern when another approach calls for it. Hiding your dissatisfaction just to be kind will do the company long-term dis-service. Especially to the code base.
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This is very evident in the styles people do interviews. For example, Bill O'Reilly is loud, calls names etc when his guests disagree with him - to the point that some of his conversations end up being loud shouting matches and the only thing left to do (as a viewer) is to turn it off. Jon Stewart on the other hand - he disagrees with his guests in a kind, calm and funny manner - it is interesting to watch him and hi…
Isn't O'Riley trying to rile up his target audience by getting his guest worked up though? If he makes the guest look unruly, even by becoming unruly himself, he can blame the guest and make the guest look bad. It's the attraction to the show. I don't watch O'Riley, but that's my perception from reading about things he's done/said.
Because of this attitude, I can not enjoy fantasy novels. They ask me to bridge the gap between multiple paragraphs with insufficient information. But at the same time, I am really comfortable with technical writing; no matter how complicated they are.
My girlfriend tells me I am mean to people, and I am not very kind. But it can't be furthest from the truth(from my perspective). I have never had any intention to hurt anyone. Gosh! I don't even hurt an ant. All she tells me is that I am `good person`.
So I asked her to demonstrate me some of the variants of conversation where I don't come of as an unkind person. I thought with enough examples, I'd able to extract a pattern.
She has been trying this for the last couple of years. But it's not working. I am yet to find a pattern, and unless I find a pattern I don't know what the anti-pattern will be.
The best solution I've found thus far is to smile and remain silent. But that can't be the only solution. So my question to HN crowd,
How do I learn to be kind?
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To be fair, this is also incredibly exhausting. Most peoples' reactions to things are arbitrary at best and constant worrying about how they will take something is just way too much BS to put into my day. I bought pretty deeply into this philosophy once and it just made me neurotic and quiet at a time of my life where those things very much hurt me. I think being selectively kind makes a lot more sense. I'm kind to c…
> To be fair, this is also incredibly exhausting What part is exhausting? Emotional fallout can be expensive in terms of time and mental energy. I don't know you, so this isn't a critique of you directly, but if being kind takes special effort you're doing something wrong. It shouldn't take much work at all. You don't need to be a mind reader and try to predict peoples reactions to things, most of the time it's just…
I think if this comes naturally to you then you're perhaps more gifted in that area than you may want to give yourself credit for. In my experience most people have a hard time being mindful and it's definitely exhausting at first. I certainly have trouble with it and it takes work to remember.
I reference the perennially over-quoted Kenyon commencement speech by David Foster Wallace only because he put it - where "it" is the trouble most people have with mindfulness - much better than I ever could:
> If I choose to think this way in a store and on the freeway, fine. Lots of us do. Except thinking this way tends to be so easy and automatic that it doesn't have to be a choice. It is my natural default setting. It's the automatic way that I experience the boring, frustrating, crowded parts of adult life when I'm operating on the automatic, unconscious belief that I am the centre of the world, and that my immediate needs and feelings are what should determine the world's priorities.
> The thing is that, of course, there are totally different ways to think about these kinds of situations. In this traffic, all these vehicles stopped and idling in my way, it's not impossible that some of these people in SUV's have been in horrible auto accidents in the past, and now find driving so terrifying that their therapist has all but ordered them to get a huge, heavy SUV so they can feel safe enough to drive. Or that the Hummer that just cut me off is maybe being driven by a father whose little child is hurt or sick in the seat next to him, and he's trying to get this kid to the hospital, and he's in a bigger, more legitimate hurry than I am: it is actually I who am in HIS way.
> Or I can choose to force myself to consider the likelihood that everyone else in the supermarket's checkout line is just as bored and frustrated as I am, and that some of these people probably have harder, more tedious and painful lives than I do.
> Again, please don't think that I'm giving you moral advice, or that I'm saying you are supposed to think this way, or that anyone expects you to just automatically do it. Because it's hard. It takes will and effort, and if you are like me, some days you won't be able to do it, or you just flat out won't want to.
Author's 'before' picture is me very often. I'm nearly ego-less in pursuit of the truth--more than ready to be shown wrong myself--but that doesn't mean that coworkers and loved ones end up feeling good about the conversation. I hope he will write a "how to" follow up, because I would like to change, but I don't see how to do it in a way that doesn't sound impossibly exhausting. I'm hopeful that it actually is possib…
I think reading, "How To Win Friends and Influence People " from Dale Carnegie helps. Took me years to understand soft skills are as much or more important than technical skills. (Fixed book's name)
I am an Engineering major(I have been programming since I was 13), and I have a bad habit of over-analyzing everything. I never skim over the details, and I always try to dig into a topic as much as I can to make sure my interpretations are correct. Because of this attitude, I can not enjoy fantasy novels. They ask me to bridge the gap between multiple paragraphs with insufficient information. But at the same time, I…
This is a fantastic article from Boz. I have to be blunt in my criticism, however, as I imagine Boz would expect and appreciate. I had a few run-ins with him in the early 2010s and I don't see much evidence that he learned from these experiences or changed his basic working pattern. Or maybe he was even more raw before I met him. :) I learned very early on not to have anything Boz wanted nor to cross him. It's hard t…
I am not sure I agree 100% with this. If both people are working on a really hard problem and the argument is based on theory, then yes, you should be kind. But if a colleague routinely creates more work for you and he thinks he is a competent programmer when not, then being kind will only further stroke his ego. I am literally facing this at work. One of my colleague has an opinion on everything. Its quite frustrati…
This is a fantastic post and hits really close to home. I'm currently going through almost the exact same situation, where I'm effectively being demoted due to my general lack of kindness. It's also important to note that if boz is anything like me, he probably had to be almost fired for the lesson to go through. For most of my life, people have been telling me I need to be kinder (especially my parents), but I've ne…
Observing and listening to others goes a long way.
That needy coworker that's annoying may be craving affirmation: smile when appropriate and avoid blaming their identity for their actions ("you failed" vs. "your stuff doesn't work").
Or that boss who's asking for stupid reports all the time may in fact be under intense pressure from above. While handling the pressure is technically his job, giving him some ammo to help reduce uncertainty helps reduce his headache.
Most religions have codified kindness as "do to others what you want them to do to you".
From a networking / interop perspective, it's "be strict in what you provide and lenient in what you accept".