This came out of a thread of tweets. I composed last night.
Like many of you, I've been reflecting a lot on why I do the things I do (particularl...
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Great content!
In my experience, not many people even have active awareness that any of the aspects of the inner game exist, much less go on to realize that the only people who end up successful (outer game) and happy (inner game) are those who excel at both.
Each one of the points you reference is a discussion in itself.
Agreed. Took me quite a while to figure out what was going on. This is very much a set of notes for a series of longer articles, maybe a short book! There was a fashion of The Inner Game... books back in the 80s I think.
The 80's? The paragraphs are already numbered! Let's write is up as a Bible and start a cult! 🙋🏻♂️🔮🤩🤩🤩
🤣 Serious now.
I think it's a great shame that developers are often blinded to the understanding of their own thought processes.
Our natural tendencies are different than most people, and there's practically nobody shedding light on such issues.
Great content, man. Great content.
Thank you. It flowed out as a set of notes :) my plan is to tidy and extend.
Any topics in particular you'd like me to elaborate on?
I was quite touched by your descriptions on working with easier stuff for a while to ease your mind - I had to do that myself.
I'd like your full detailed account, to be honest. 🙈
Cool - there are two reasons to do that. One is self-compassion (you need to go easy on yourself), the second is values (you've decided that something else is actually more important in your life - a side project or passion project - and you'd like to give more of yourself to it). Both are valid, it can seem a bit unwise to people around you to step back or take "less responsibility" but the inner game part is the acknowledgement that it's your life and you know best what's good for you. And watching your own inner resistance.
I'll write heaps more on this soon.
Thanks for the feedback!
Top post, for my interests precisely! I would like to add cognitive skills (mental qualities) and social skills (social emotional quotient and people hacking vs solitude) and creativity and more depth to all of your topics. We often exclude prose from the many books we read to have more time for the technical books of our trade, yet it is literature of human situations that requires deeper awareness and insight into their relationships both help to increase mental qualities too and perhaps, to some extent, help to get a handle on the variety of human conditions of our existences. However the inner "game" as a metaphor has an aspect that seems a little short-sighted to me. There is an important difference between divergent and convergent thinking and "games" have rules and these rules are usually mastered in the way of convergent thinking while development and mastering software engineering requires divergent thinking too. Something to ponder on for me too.
Thank you for the insightful comment! The game metaphor is not my own - there were a number of famous books (The innner game of Tennis, the inner game of music and so on) and I'm riffing on that. I think you are correct, understanding, working with and developing mental qualities is a big part of it, especially EQ. I often argue that software development is a creative act, more akin to the composition of music than the building of a bridge. It sounds like you've thought about this a bit already, reach out if you'd like to continue the conversation!
Why not ?!! Delighted, no - thrilled!
Daragh - great read.
Did you play sports? This reminds me of playing highly competitive tennis and what it takes for a high-performing athlete to remain high-performing. I love how you used the paths of inner and outer "game" to help engineers better think about how they show up in the space.
I would love to hear you speak about how as a manager you can monitor the inner & outer game of your team to be more effective, or perhaps - the other way around how do developers communicate their parts of their inner game to enable managers to be better for them.
This is actually adapted from The Inner Game of Tennis, which was a coaching phenomena many years ago!
That's a good question. I guess openness of communication/psychological safety is part of it. Let me think about it.
Thankyou Sir for this article on our stubborn mindset,
Please give some ideas how to change the mindset while solving the coding problems if one idea doesn't work?
I find it difficult sometimes
What sort of difficult mindset do you experience? Frustration? Anger? Not feeling able to solve the problem?
Often I find it useful to substitute words in my thinking. For example, if I am thinking "I can't fix this..." I turn it into "I can't fix this... yet".
Also the mindset of having to fail a number of times before you succeed - it's OK when things don't work, because it obviously wasn't the right answer! So you've learned something in this case, it's not a waste of time...
Let me know more specifically what you struggle with!
In some tough questions,I misinterpret the logic so after trying the most I see the solution and I feel down that it couldn't cracked by me so I didn't practicecoding after 1-3 days which makes me question that how can I achieve the logic?
Please suggest me Sir how can I work towards it.
How to build complicated logics?
The biggest shift in mindset is to be kind to yourself. You are learning! Of course you don't know anything. Of course you will look back and think - oh, I should have seen that. But these moments are part of the process. So don't give yourself a hard time for not understanding. In a year's time, or even a few months, you'll remember this moment and be able to apply the same logic, and then you will be proud of yourself.
You build complex logic out of lots of simple pieces of logic wired together, break it down, be patient and be kind with yourself! And don't be afraid to ask for help :)
Thankyou Sir I will remember your words while practicing coding
Nice it's great that it talks about it so much on the need to have both.
Yes. But the inner is overlooked and we need to cultivate it.
Yes definitely the problem in it might be they may be bogged down to their perspective on the outer mindset due to the short term advantage that comes with it.
That's an excellent point, thank you!
This is excellent! Very true.
Thank you for this beautiful content. Health to your hands. More content like this content should be produced!