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Be a thermostat, not a thermometer (2023)

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Re: Be a thermostat, not a thermometer (2023)

#31

Post by rocqua »

brigandish wrote: post #25
deisteve wrote: post #6

While the article has some good points about the importance of emotional intelligence and awareness, I'm skeptical about the idea that we can simply "choose" to be thermostats. Humans are complex and emotional creatures, and our emotions can be triggered by a multitude of factors beyond our control. The article's suggestions, while well-intentioned, feel like a form of emotional labor that can be exhausting and unsus…

What is emotional labour?

The effort someone chooses to put in to manage and help the emotions of others.

It ranges from listening to someone talk about their day to driving over at night to a friend who's upset, to organizing an entire intervention.

It is often considered to fall more heavily on women. Notably, as work that often doesn't fully get redistributed when women enter the workforce, much like housekeeping often doesn't.

Re: Be a thermostat, not a thermometer (2023)

#32

Post by darby_nine »

theultdev wrote: post #12
deisteve wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

totally understand where you're coming from, but I think there's a difference between being aware of your emotions and trying to suppress or fake them. The article isn't suggesting that we should be constantly 'on' and pretending to be someone we're not. Rather, it's about developing self-awareness and learning to manage our emotions in a way that's authentic and sustainable. Recognizing the stimuli that trigger our…

I didn't say suppress or fake your emotions, I said to rationalize them. If they are irrational you prevent the emotional knee-jerk response in the first place. If they are rational then you know the root cause to work through so you can fix the issue. For those rational emotional responses, recognizing the stimuli can still be helpful. It's still stressing, but you know the exact problem and can work to resolve it,…

I don't see how recognizing an emotion as irrational gives you certainty of calming it. Generally speaking, emotions don't arise from a conveniently rational level of consciousness. If they did they would be referred to with terms ofther than "emotion".

Re: Be a thermostat, not a thermometer (2023)

#33

Post by jeffhuys »

deisteve wrote: post #11
Suppafly wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you can consciously learn a skill by practicing it enough. You can choose to project positivity and like most things in life, fake it until you make it. >feel like a form of emotional labor that can be exhausting and unsustainable There definitely some wisdom in knowing when to draw back for your own sanity.

On one hand, I completely agree that deliberate practice and intentional positivity can be powerful tools for growth and skill-building. The 'fake it till you make it' approach can be especially helpful for building confidence and momentum. I think the key is finding that balance between pushing ourselves to grow and being kind to ourselves when we need to rest. It's okay to take a step back, recharge, and prioritize…

I don’t know why and I might be wrong, but (parts of) some of your comments read exactly like an LLM response, while other parts feel like you typing additional stuff “around” the response.

Re: Be a thermostat, not a thermometer (2023)

#35

Post by rocqua »

I loved the article, but something about it felt off.

The content (good) didn't match what I would expect from the style. The writing style reminde me of a mix off business advice and aggrandizing self-help. My expectation with that is sweeping generalizations, just-so annecdotes, and not saying very much, whilst not backing up what you are saying with sound reasoning either.

Somehow this article had that writing style, without those problems. It made it a rather dissonant experience, because I was looking for the catch, what I was being sold, the anecdote that is almost certainly a lie, and the overly strong conclusion. But that never came, and instead I find myself believing.

And yet, the dissonance remains. I have a little worry that the swindle was just better this time. It's a weird feeling, and not one I had before.

Re: Be a thermostat, not a thermometer (2023)

#36

Post by mock-possum »

brigandish wrote: post #25
deisteve wrote: post #6

While the article has some good points about the importance of emotional intelligence and awareness, I'm skeptical about the idea that we can simply "choose" to be thermostats. Humans are complex and emotional creatures, and our emotions can be triggered by a multitude of factors beyond our control. The article's suggestions, while well-intentioned, feel like a form of emotional labor that can be exhausting and unsus…

What is emotional labour?

Think of it like the difference between idly leafing through a book, versus studying a textbook as if your life depended on it - one is an inconsequential pastime, the other is an exhausting task made all the more stressful by its importance.

Emotional labor is dealing with other people’s emotions, not in the first sense described in the paragraph above, but in the second - paying close attention, thinking critically, interpreting what you see and hear and feel in an effort to help someone in some way. It’s shouldering their emotional burden, to some degree, to support them, as best you can - same as physical labor might be.

Re: Be a thermostat, not a thermometer (2023)

#38

Post by trabant00 »

There's an unspoken premise here and I'm going to question it. Avoiding tension, conflict, hard words and other things of the sort is not always the right choice. Sometimes letting conflicts play out gets you the best outcome with the least amount of suffering. Just like ripping off a band-aid.

There's plenty of times when wining a conflict is far better than avoiding it. And I see articles like this, books like Nonviolent Communication, ideas like "emotional intelligence" (check it out, no such thing exists) - as misguided as it always puts you in the defensive/de-escalating role even when you might be better served by letting things play out or even attacking, baiting your opponent into attacking, etc.

Violence is sometimes the right answer. When to apply it and when to avoid it is the hard question. But we didn't evolve an amygdala for nothing, and especially not for a "coach for leaders" (what the hell is that?) to tell us to always ignore it as an unquestioned premise for a promotional blog post. Because leaders should not always shy away from conflict, that much should be pretty crystal clear.

Re: Be a thermostat, not a thermometer (2023)

#39

Post by kettleballroll »

osigurdson wrote: post #34

I just hate this kind of stuff. Good for you if you can create a consulting business out of stating the obvious I suppose. It is a drain on the economy however.

> Good for you if you can create a consulting business out of stating the obvious I suppose.

In my experience, tech problems are a lot easier to solve than people problems, and a lot of things that don't go well in a project turn out to be people problems. E.g. here are a few issues I encountered in my current project at work in the last month: "their framework makes assumptions that don't apply to our code, so we reimplemented the metrics instead of trying to integrate their version" or "the data was labelled wrongly, so we had to work around that", or "this coding convention is slowing us down". Once I tried digging down, it turns out they were all people problems in disguise, and they could all be solved by "stating the obvious". Do you never encounter issues on team / across teams, where in the end it turns out a lot of issues are just people not talking to each other or misunderstanding each other? If things are too hairy, I can definitely see the value in an external consultant helping disentangle these sort of problems.

Re: Be a thermostat, not a thermometer (2023)

#40

Post by dailykoder »

sethammons wrote: post #23

> You’re being a thermometer. When they’re subtly giving off weird vibes—they’re frowning, answering your questions with fewer words than normal, etc.—you’ve noticed that their temperature is different. And if you are doing this as a coping mechanism from having an unstable parent and you are like me (also maybe a bit of adhd): you internalize the person's chilled behavior and often assume it is your fault. In case y…

I know this and I have learned more than enough about it to internalize it, but it just doesn't work. I can't find a way to stop the automatic jumping to conclusion and self blame.

It takes hours to get over it and that's exhausting. I am trying for years to find a way out, but it just hasn't internalized yet

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