Most people strive to be perfect. No, not to be, but to seem. Straight beauty around, not the world. Especially now, when there are social networks.
And he is handsome himself, and works perfectly, and gets along with people, and develops constantly, and reads smart books, and rests on the seas, and solves problems on time, and is promising, and watches the right films (so that the rating on Kinopoisk is 7.5, not lower ), and at the school-institute I studied perfectly, and if not excellent, then I “just was myself”, and a patriot, and does not violate the rules of the road, and helps grandmothers to cross the road. Nyasha.
At the same time, if you look, most of us are really good people. Everyone has not just good traits or skills, each of us is really unique. It sounds trite and hackneyed, but it's a fact: everyone has a job that he does better than anyone else in the world.
Like, all this is a no brainer. Everyone is good in something, average in something, and would not be better suited to something. A hedgehog is understandable, but not always for people. People try to be/seem to be good at everything.
Is it worth it? Or not so: what is it worth?
Let's remember the Pareto principle: 80/20. 80% of the effort is spent on 20% of the requirements, and 20% of the effort is spent on the remaining 80% of the work.
In general, I don’t really like all sorts of laws there, but I constantly find confirmation of the Pareto formula. Once I made a report on the analysis of the causes of product defects - and exactly, damn it, eighty percent of the marriage was explained by exactly, damn it, twenty percent of the reasons. Moreover, 80% of marriage both in terms of the number of parts and their cost. Magic.
So, exactly the same story with ideality. A person has one or more key skills, abilities, or talents. If he uses them normally, then this set of skills gives him 80% success in life. Well, and, accordingly, a person spends 20% of his efforts on the use of his talents. Doing what works is easy, right? It just kind of goes on.
And the rest of the image, which is not a strong side of a person, is much more difficult. The remaining 80% of the effort goes to maintaining the halo of ideality. Just think about it - four times more.
Well, sort of, okay - a person wants to be perfect, so for God's sake. Let him spend his efforts as he pleases. But what does the ideal image lead to?
To high expectations, what else. If you are perfect, then no one else is expected of you. You must be handsome in everything. You can't be wrong, never.
What is allowed to the “ordinary” is impossible for you, no matter what you do. As they say, he called himself a loader - climb into the body. Are you the perfect programmer? Please, never write shitty code. Do you write articles? Ok, you have to live up to the public's expectations. Are you saying you have the perfect body? Forget the beer with smoked ribs. Are you rooting for a healthy lifestyle? Well, God forbid I see you in a poppy.
This is a game - for everyone except the unfortunate. This is obvious to others, but not to him. The more efforts a person puts in to be perfect, the more it seems to him that everyone around is only doing what they are watching his successes and, most importantly, failures.
And here he is right. Everyone follows his failures much more closely than the failures of the rest. And much closer than behind his successes. As the green goblin said, people are much more interested in the failures of the hero, his fall and death.
To put it simply, nobody cares about someone's ideality. No one will admire her, except for the hero himself. And all the efforts spent on creating the image will be in vain.
One author of one book offered such a metaphor to explain the efforts to maintain an ideal image. Imagine that you have to carry a pig with you all the time. He breaks out, squeals, and you spend tremendous efforts to keep the pig. From the outside, it is obvious to everyone that you are doing nonsense, and you have no real reason to carry a pig with you. Just want.
On the other hand, there is a tendency to idealization. If you do something well, there are people around who begin to think and then say that you are the ideal. Look for something in you that was never born there. They themselves create the image of the very pig that you have to carry with you. Even if you didn't plan it yourself.
Here the person himself decides whether to correspond to the implanted image or not. Most agree - it's so nice when you, roughly speaking, are promoted. Oh, I didn't think I was that good. Do you really think that I write good code? Yes? In general, yes. I myself began to notice that my code is quite good. Very. What's there - he's gorgeous!
Further support is turned off - the image has been created for you, and then you need to carry it yourself. If you are not a governor, of course, there is a separate article in the budget for them, something like “maintaining the image of the governor” is called. A person is left alone with the image and efforts to support it.
The problem is aggravated by the fact that, it seems, it’s dumb to roll back, because. I didn't climb the mountain myself. Uncomfortable in front of those who kicked you up. Their investment in you will be gone if you bail. Well, they won't mess with you anymore.
Several times in my life I found myself in a situation where they either promoted me or invented some kind of image for me. But he never became ideal, for two reasons: laziness and an invented principle.
Laziness always saved, starting from school. In general, I was a nerd and an excellent student. So good that he once completed two classes in one year. I was set as an example, driven to the Olympics and competitions, forced to sing and dance. And I was lazy.
I ran away from the preparation for the Olympics, because it was after school. I periodically received fours, threes and deuces. Fortunately, my parents didn’t really care - they looked into the diary twice a year. Well, in the end I got a normal, working medal - silver, because in the 10th grade I got two deuces in one lesson, because I drew an apple tree on the margins of my notebook.
Similarly, laziness saved at work. I will achieve some kind of success, and, it seems, logic and military science suggest that success must be developed. And I'm lazy. After the victory, I want to relax, watch TV and crunch on chips, literally and figuratively. A freshly baked ideal image melts before our eyes, in a few days.
But laziness alone is not enough. Over the years, some skills and abilities have grown, and part of the work associated with them is done almost blindfolded, without much effort. You can maintain the same level, through the sleeves, although earlier you had to plow directly. And laziness no longer helps to resist the attempts of others to create an ideal image.
Here a simple principle came to the rescue: balancing. To do nasty things, in short. Consciously, periodically do something that destroys any ideal image.
For example, writing articles. As soon as I write several articles in a row on the same topic, only readers are pulled up. They create expectations and put them on me. Laziness does not save - I write too fast. And readers keep demanding and demanding - they find it both through personal messages and through social networks, and some come on foot. Give, they say, articles on the topics that we like.
But I do not want. Therefore, I do a conscious muck - I write on a different topic. Do you like hoodlit? Here's an article about change management. Love something about programmers? Here's to you about managers. Interested in project management? Soryan, I want about doctors.
And sometimes I balance so that no one is offended. I am writing an article that a priori will go into minus. Just to reduce readers' expectations.
If you do not do this, you begin to feel the burden of “responsibility”, literally physically. You want to write about one thing, but you need to write about another. Because readers want. Because they want me the way they imagined for themselves.
Similarly, I balance any other activity. For example, I deliberately do not follow the plan. I do three months, I skip one. Even if it's possible to do it.
Sometimes I write shitty code. Consciously. Stupid comments, stupid metadata names, moronic names of properties and methods.
Simply put, in order not to be a slave to expectations, one must be unexpected. It is possible with the help of laziness, it is possible - consciously.
Shattering expectations is easy and simple. Much easier than maintaining and developing the image created by these expectations. Then 80% of the effort does not have to be spent, and you can finally get down to business. Direct the released efforts to those areas in which you are good.
True, one muck is not enough - the image is still created again. New people come who have not seen a conscious misconduct, but the old ones forget. They think - well, a person stumbled (they don’t know that I did it deliberately. Although, now they will read and find out). And again they begin to sculpt what is not and should not be.
Therefore, the practice of conscious nasty things has to be repeated periodically. As soon as I felt the birth of the vise of expectations, immediately - broads them poop in the cake. They immediately make a sour face, “Oh, there you are,” and fall behind. Everything, now you can work normally.
I extend the same principle, as far as I can, to subordinates. Most of them are young, and therefore imbued with a modern culture of indispensable success in everything. As soon as something starts to turn out - immediately the chin is up, and they mold out of themselves who knows who.
No, that's not possible. The cure is simple: crap. Only in this case it must either be found or created. It's easy to find if you look - everyone always has a jamb. There is no need to expose it directly to the public - it is enough to mention it in a private conversation.
It’s a little more difficult to create nastiness - you need to give a task that a person obviously cannot cope with in a timely manner. Not so that he received a strong blow in his significance, but only in order to bring down his arrogance and return him to the sinful earth. To direct efforts to work and develop skills, and not to create and maintain an image that only he needs.
Here, too, a balance is needed. Do not humiliate, do not dip your head in shit, do not discourage the desire to do something useful and necessary, but simply help stop spending 80% of your efforts on maintaining an image that no one needs.
The lower the expectations, the closer the reality. The closer the reality, the more adequate the perception. The more adequate the perception, the more correct the action. The more correct the action, the better the result.
Although I'm most likely wrong. And you tell me about it now. It was I who destroyed expectations from myself and created expectations from you.
Source: habr.com