Thought Confetti #3: Project Management
Why am I a better collaborative partner for other people than I am for myself? [4576/1000000, 0.45% toward my goal]
Working with myself sucks.
I’m a terrible manager/partner to me.
This thought was inspired by my friend, Visa, who has been having similar thoughts over at
.Specifically, he said:
Like, imagine being me. I have this guy, Visa, that so many people praise as a really fun and clever guy to work with. And yet I hardly let Visa work with me at all. It’s like I put him on the bench and lecture at him instead of allowing him to do what he’s naturally good at. Why do I do this?
And:
I somehow overestimate and underestimate myself simultaneously in different dimensions, which suggests to me that my self-image is delightfully distorted through a funhouse-mirror of my fixations.
In his comments, an astute reader wrote:
I sometimes fantasize about cloning myself so I could be my own coach and/or business manager and/or hype woman. I would be unstoppable!!! Maybe I am already?
Luckily for me, it is basically possible to clone myself, even if I can’t have two different bodies. All I need to do is pretend to be my own manager while also pretending to be my own collaborator/co-worker. Will this make me unstoppable?
Let’s unpack this by splitting into two parts and having a dialogue. First, I want to hear from the “worker” who feels like I suck at being a manager. Get it all out, bud.
WORKER: You suck at managing me! You never help me accomplish my goals, and you never work together with me. You don't whiteboard with me. You don't brainstorm with me. You don't imagine what we could build together. You love doing this with others, but why not me? You don't guide my career, you don't sit me down and create a plan of action to help me make the progress I want to make. You don't revel with me, laugh with me, share drinks with me. You don't take me on retreats to work together. You don't treat me like you would treat one of your real employees. You treat me as a special class, as if I can "figure myself out", but why? Why aren't I as worthy of your attention, time, and collaborative energy as any of your "real friends". You always help them to accomplish their projects. You always offer to project manage with them. You always feel like unblocking them. But you rarely do the same with me, despite us sharing one destiny. What's so awkward about working together?
MANAGER: I do try... I think I try... I can't really see what I'm doing wrong, can we be specific here?
WORKER: Like, I clearly want to be a great engineer. I clearly want to build a game engine. There are a number of projects I could bring up that you've proposed, that you've gotten me excited about. Or that I've proposed and gotten you excited about. In fact, it doesn't really feel like there's a MANAGER in me at all. So maybe I'm not mad at a MANAGER part, maybe I'm mad at myself. Maybe it's more like two different co-workers at the same level...1
MANAGER: Okay, but maybe each employee should have a MANAGER. Maybe I can start? Maybe we can talk here…
MANAGER: …so what are your goals?
WORKER: I want to finish projects so that we gain owned-expertise together. I want us to share skills, to have fun building, to revel in hard work... because laboring together is deeply humanizing. Basically, I want you to be a collaborator with me, I want you to be proud of the work I do, and I want you to push me to do even better work.
MANAGER: That all makes sense to me... and honestly, I'd really like that, too. I want to work together, and I do feel like you've been neglected while I mostly use my skills to help other people. I've been really excited about helping T, D, J, J, H, L, etc build the projects that excite them, because it's deeply humanizing to labor together with others... but I've neglected that I can humanize myself by enjoying working with you, Andrew.
MANAGER: …So let's start now. What is it you want to work on, and how can I unblock you? What do you need to be unblocked?
WORKER: Thank you... this is really exciting! Okay, so right now I have 3 main projects going on in parallel that I'd like your help with. The first is a project to build a computer from scratch / from first principles, using just NAND gates. I'm following a book called NandToTetris, and I'd like to finish it. I think I could finish it and enjoy the process on my own, actually, I've really been enjoying it. But one thing I need help with is delivering progress updates. I don't really feel motivated to write up my journey or to work in public. I'd like to have fun doing that, and I think I might be giving myself standards that are too high.
MANAGER: Okay, before you share the other two, let's start there. You don't want to write progress updates? Why?
WORKER: It seems like a lot of work, and I'd rather make more progress on the task itself rather than writing about the task.
MANAGER: The notes you make will last forever.
WORKER: True, I understand, but so will my knowledge. It just feels like a lot to try to organize my thoughts for others.
MANAGER: Oh, you feel a responsibility to do it for others? What if you just do it for yourself?
WORKER: I feel like I'll just remember, though. I don’t need the notes.
MANAGER: hmm... well, what's the lowest effort thing you could do?
WORKER: I guess I could spend like 5 minutes just writing bullet points of what I've been up to after each chapter. Then maybe we could flesh those out together after I send them to you? That sounds easy and pretty fun. I'd want someone to review the bullet points with, to figure out what's interesting, and I don't really want to do it myself.
MANAGER: That sounds great. Send me written bullet points of your top-of-mind thoughts on each project after you complete it. No need to be fancy or even grammatically correct. I also wonder if we can't use GPT-4 to help flesh out those bullet points into a summary that we'd like... but I don't want to add scope creep.
WORKER: Yea, let's just do the bullet points for now.
MANAGER: Okay, what are your other projects?
WORKER: Well, I'll list them but I actually am more focused on NandToTetris than anything else right now, so I want to be careful not to get ahead of myself. I also want to build a game engine, because I've always cared about game design, and I've never been able to easily design the games I like because I've always shuddered at how annoying it is to learn a game engine. I think if I design my own game engine (even though this is an insane and ludicrously high-effort way to learn a game engine) I will finally own the tools to build games. The way I learn things is to build them myself. It's just how it is... The final project is learning how to make music using code, via Sonic Pi. I might want to use it to perform, as well. Maybe at a talent show, or maybe as a jam at one of our interdimensional jamborees? something that would help here is signing me up for something where I have to learn. Maybe helping me find a course, or helping me design goals or blog posts I could write that would be very interesting... Maybe we could do some brainstorming together there?
MANAGER: Yea, I'm sure we can do that. Let's schedule time for it. Should we do it later today? We can kick it if we aren't feeling it.
WORKER: Yea, sounds good. Let's do like 4pm, so I have time to do my nandtotetris work first.
MANAGER: Great. See you then :)
And that’s where my 15 minutes of journaling ended.
If you’re interested in the manic journaling practice I’ve been using for Thought Confetti, you can use the same app, called “The Most Dangerous Writing App”. Start by writing for 5 minutes, non-stop. Then do 10, then 15. So far, Thought Confettis have each been 15-minute journals.
Also, if you’re interested in the practice of journaling to yourself as different characters using the screenwriting style, I highly recommend trying it out. Turns out human beings are remarkably good at two important (and interconnected) skills:
Play-pretend (acting)
Conversation
You can combine these two skills by having conversations with yourself, pretending to be the people that you need to talk to, maybe your heroes, your parents, your friends, your younger self, your older self, your subconscious mind, or just two versions of yourself that you give arbitrary titles, as I did here. If you do try, I’d love to read your words, please do share them with me in the comments.
You have my regards and thank you for reading,
Andrew
This was an interesting moment in my journaling session. I was really mad at some “manager” for mismanaging me, but then in this moment, I realized I didn’t even have an internal manager. I was frustrated, but there was no actual conflict. As soon as I noticed the problem, it was actually very easy to fix, all I did was offer the sort of help/management to myself that I was asking for!