I’ve often had anxiety light bulbs go off after technical conferences. People were discussing open source, so why am I not doing open source? Everyone is doing Open Source; what am I doing? Or all managers should be generally incompetent and not be stupid in processes or hires.
This is all partially true—maybe even the industry is in a bad state. Everything needs improvement, rationalization, and communication. And someone like going to make it better, and people are resisting. So I fight, I fight the system, and the result is self-esteem issues, health issues, burnout, and maybe depression if I push harder. And people looks are annoying too.
Many things are taken personally, causing frustration and suppressed anger. The questions involve anxiety and safety. I’m a bad leader or employee if I’m not doing something. “What’s wrong with me? Am I broken? Am I going to survive?”
It took some time to realize that the path to everything good at work versus everything bad without built-in personal boundaries is somewhat evil, too. Translating from psychological personal boundaries can be called different words, too—the logic of healthy selfishness without self-centeredness, emotional maturity, soft skills, and core skills.
Wise people have told me about this since the beginning of my mentoring and sub-mentoring experience about five years ago, but it’s only now starting to hit me. I am figuring out where my boundaries are and where other people’s boundaries are. I didn’t realize that it is necessary to be pro-client outside of roles and strive for everything good against everything terrible.
I want to help, but it is not so interesting, and no energy is the answer “no”. I want to try something inexpensive and have energy, so why not? Strive not to rest but to restore energy in activities. Maximalism does not turn out to be a very long-term strategy. The boundaries should be in communication and words through the mouth. Or sometimes words through a chat room.
Not everyone does Open-Source, and managers will not always be about the best vs. the bad every minute. Sometimes, we may also be about ourselves so that we can survive stress, take care of ourselves, and be ready to act in a more critical moment because we don’t always have to be the best at everything. It’s essential to stay among the survivors as well.
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I’m Alex, tech lead in Prestatech with experience from startups to middle-sized and big-tech companies. Loves to make effective and friendly team processes. The registry of talks and articles I gave is on the Published page.
You can freely drop a message to [email protected] or linkedin.com/in/aptakhin to greet and ask questions about any topic.