Use anxiety to your advantage
Original email from Dec 20, 2024
I remember how loud my heartbeat was during my first interview
I could feel it throughout my body. No matter how much I prepared and practiced for it, the real thing always got my hands shaking. The worst parts of me would imagine everything that I could say, do or be that's wrong. It would even sometimes whisper an insecurity or two in my ear just for kicks.
This voice is also responsible for what we in the community refer to as "imposter syndrome". It's like a little voice that is pretty negative and loves listing all the reasons why you might not deserve something that's yours.
Let's personify those worst parts into a single character that we all can agree with sort of sucks. The representation of a pessimistic goblin-like figure who makes you second guess yourself – Leaving you anxious all the time.
And let's call this personification Jerry. Welcome to the world Jerry!
Everybody has a Jerry. Nobody really likes him, but I mean... he's at the party and even if we tell him to take a hike, the dude won't leave. He can be sort of a buzzkill and hard to like.
If you listen to Jerry too much, you're going to start feeling anxious and self conscious about yourself. He's going to say stuff like:
Do you really deserve to be here?
You're going to run out of things to say in this conversation and things will get awkward.
You're not going to know what to say and you're going to feel bad about it.
Depending on the person, some Jerry's are a bit... more harsh than others. But hey, we can't get rid of our Jerry. So might as well learn to manage him. And if we're lucky... use them to our advantage 👀
You can use your Jerry to your advantage
Imagine you're nervous about an upcoming interview you have. If you ask yourself:
What is everything that could go wrong in the interview?
Suddenly Jerry pops up without warning and starts listing everything.
He starts saying things like:
You can have a food stain on your shirt from the spaghetti you packed yourself for lunch.
You can forget the interviewer's name.
You can forget what the difference between a var and a const is.
And a bunch more.
Since Jerry is anxiety incarnate, he loves listing problems, issues and what-ifs that can and could ruin your day. It's like his job at this point. And since your job is to be a frontend developer, why not use him to your advantage?
Imagine now you receive a new feature request or a ticket and you take a bit to analyze it well. Now if you ask yourself:
What is everything that could go wrong about implementing this feature? What can make this fail and/or get me fired?
Suddenly (and surprisingly), Jerry rears his head.
He starts saying things like:
You need to make sure the feature works on both responsive and desktop
You need to consider translations for multiple languages here
You're creating a form in this one. Maybe GDPR should be considered?
The button colors don't seem to have a good contrast. This might be bad
What's the delivery date for this? Can you do this in that time?
And so on and so forth.
What's great about this list that your little Jerry listed out is a great list of risks, considerations, and notes to take and look at about the feature. Especially during the initial meetings where you handle and analyze these tickets, it's great to bring them up and have them in the forefront.
Because any observations that you find that haven't been noticed earlier in the dev cycle slowly build up your credibility as a software engineer.
I've slowly found that to be true during my career. So leaving that little nugget of wisdom to you. Enjoy the rest of the week!
P.S.
Jerry's images are attributed and from freepik.com. Seeing that one image inspired me completely for this email. Sending love to the crazy person who took the hand puppet photo.