Our emotions help inform the type of story we tell. If we're feeling amazing we tell ourselves that what lies ahead will also be amazing. If we're feeling down and defeated our story reflects our defeated tone.
-The truth is that our story is just that --- a story. Our stories are not a guarantee of how the day will progress. We can tell ourselves a story that today will be amazing and watch in horror as each interaction causes our day to be anything but amazing. Or we can say that the story for today will be terrible and we won't accomplish anything, but instead have a pretty decent and productive day. The story can only accentuate what we're experiencing; it can't predict what we will experience.
+The truth is that our story is just that --- a story. Our stories are not a guarantee of how the day will progress. We can tell ourselves a story that today will be amazing and watch in horror as each interaction causes our day to be anything but amazing. Or our story could be that today will be terrible and we won't accomplish anything, but instead we experience a decent and productive day. The story only accentuates what we're experiencing; it can't predict what we will experience.
-Rather than being attached to these grand stories we can focus more on the things that we love about the present moment. Instead of saying that you're going to have an amazing day you could say that there are aspects of this project that appeal to you and that you hope to work on them soon. Instead of filling your day with stories of dread and doom you can focus on the little victories along the way. (Yes, even something as small as "my computer booted without crashing" can be a victory.) A little victory could be setting an intention to remain focused and curious for the next 10 minutes (the focus container from previous chapters) and celebrating that you made it through that intention. You can get more little victories as you keep working with that intention throughout the day. Our little victories won't all be perfect (perhaps your computer is being extra stubborn today) but we can re-calibrate our day for the next 10 minutes to find out if the next 10 minutes can be another little victory.
+Rather than being attached to these grand stories we can focus more on the things that we love about the present moment. Instead of a story that you're going to have an amazing day you could focus on the aspects of your project that appeal to you and hope that you can work on them soon. Instead of filling your day with stories of dread and doom you can focus on the little victories that happen along the way. (Yes, even something as simple as "my computer booted without crashing" can be a victory.) One of those little victories could be setting an intention to remain focused and curious for the next 10 minutes (the focus container from previous chapters) and celebrating when you make it through that intention. You can get more little victories as you keep working with that intention throughout the day. Our little victories won't all be perfect (perhaps your computer is being extra stubborn today), but we can use them to re-calibrate our day for the next 10 minutes and keep using them to re-calibrate throughout the day as each container of focus becomes another little victory.
-Giving ourselves the power to focus more on the present and the very next steps we're about to take gives us the freedom to re-calibrate as the day progresses. We can focus on the positive aspects of what we're doing instead of worrying how reality is diverging from our internal stories. We can course-correct throughout the day and keep trending towards a more productive day rather than fretting about how distant we are from our ideal day.
+Giving ourselves the power to focus more on the present and the very next steps we're about to take gives us a mindful way to check in with ourselves and our progress. We can focus on the positive aspects of what we're doing instead of worrying how reality is diverging from our stories. We can course-correct throughout the day and keep trending towards a more productive day rather than fretting about how distant we are from our ideal day.
-This will take practice. We're accustomed to letting our stories drive our day. But over time we'll be able to break our day into chunks where we can be more flexible with the types of stories we tell ourselves.
+This will take practice. We're accustomed to letting our stories drive our day, but over time we'll be able to break our day into smaller chunks where we can be more mindful of stories we tell ourselves.
## Awareness in action
+### FIXME
+
Let's pretend for a moment that it's a typical day. Today we're feeling anxious. We've just received a bug report and it's related to something we've been working on. The bug report states that code that we committed earlier this year isn't working and probably has never worked the way we thought it worked. As we read the bug report our anxiety levels increase. Our inner monologue kicks in and we start telling ourselves that we aren't nearly as good as we thought. We're not perfect. We suck. We didn't get enough sleep the night before so our emotions are in a state of heightened awareness. Our mind races and flashes images of the other times when we've failed. As we keep reading our sense of dread kicks in. Our internal monologue becomes a frenzied chatter: "What will they think of me? What do they think of me now? Am I going to lose my job over this?"
Before we've even finished reading the bug report we've created a story. The story begins with a montage of our past failures and adds this latest bug report to that montage. Our story then ratchets up the pressure by raising the stakes of the importance of this bug report: not only do we have to fix whatever broke but now we have to fix our reputation and start a job search. As the story progresses in our minds we're wondering if we'll ever work as a programmer again, and feel that our career as a programmer is over.
projects / themediocreprogrammer.git / commitdiff