In my day-to-day career, I coach development teams. I work with individuals and give them the permission they need to approach solving problems in novel ways. Once they feel empowered to play, and accept that experimentation is part of creative work (of which software development certainly is), they build better connections, find motivation, and bring their best selves to work. This in turn creates better results, greater satisfaction, and the cycle repeats.
What’s ironic about this, is in my personal life/career, I’m terrible at these things. So I’ve been exploring the question:
How can I empower myself?
I started this self-discovery by exploring patterns I recognise in my behaviour first:
- I’ll only commit if I understand why I need to do something, and it’s based on real data/experience.
- I need to be constantly reminded of the value of these habits, or the value increase, otherwise I’ll stop.
- I can experiment with my behaviours, but only in the short-term, if I don’t see some quick value, I stop.
So for me, evidence and data are key. Naturally, I jumped straight into unchartered territory and started gathering data. On myself. Meta.
I’ve been systematically documenting the emotions I feel throughout the work day and the activities I’m doing, with the goal to explore correlations between inspiration, motivation and my actions.
What I’ve learnt is interesting:
- Documenting yourself all the time is a chore, and I haven’t consistently stuck to it (refer to point 3, above)
- I have found environment effects my mood, and experimented with different locations around London for optimal feel good. Bright, bustling cafes with a sexy ambiance are my bread and butter
- Social activities have a dynamic impact on me. I feed off others emotions. Positive interactions energise me, while stressful ones bring down my mood long after the interaction has finished
I haven’t correlated these insights to specific datasets yet or looked for subtler patterns. I plan to explore that next week.
If you’re interested in joining me in some wacky self-experimentation, send me a message. Lets self-empower together.
