Still thinking of yourself as a software engineer? Maybe you're holding yourself back. (No. 62)
"You should be far more concerned with your current trajectory than with your current results."
A saying goes something like this: if you want to know what the strategic direction of a company is, simply read whatever random book the CEO bought at the airport bookstore before a recent flight. Similar logic applies to what I’m going to do with today’s letter.
I recently picked up a book myself, and now I have some really powerful insights for you today.
Specifically, I’m sharing some ideas from Atomic Habits by James Clear. Obviously, Clear isn’t writing to tech leads or first line tech leadership, like engineering managers or startup CTOs, the way I do. But the concepts he teaches are helpful, if applied to your role, which I’ll try to do here.
Small Habits > Big Accomplishments
Clear’s basic premise is that becoming great or accomplishing something big is the result of your day to day, small (“atomic”) habits.
When thinking about huge accomplishments, whether they’re shipping a new product, a big promotion, a huge stock payout from years of hard work, or whatever matters to you, “[i]t is so easy to overestimate the importance of [those] defining moment[s] and underestimate the value of making small improvements on a daily basis.”
He offers compound math as evidence: “if you can get 1 percent better [at a task] each day for one year, you’ll end up thirty-seven times better by the time you’re done.”
The question, of course, is how to change those daily habits. He has a lot to say on this point. I’ll try to report back more this week as I explore the book a bit more on some useful tips for you.
Want To Make A Big Change? Shift Your Identity as A Tech Lead
Let’s start this week with a big insight. According to Clear, the easiest way to change habits is to change your identity. Your identity can be thought of as the way you see yourself combined with evidence that you are who you think you are.
Let’s say you are trying to stop smoking, and someone offers you a cigarette. You could say, “no thanks, I’m trying to quit,” or, “no thanks, I’m not a smoker anymore.” In the first case, you still think of yourself as a smoker so it’s a mental struggle to say no. In the second case, it’s a bit easier because you’re being consistent with your own identity.
As you turn down more and more cigarettes, that sense of identity--“I’m not a smoker”--gets stronger and stronger through more and more evidence.
As I was reading this part of Clear’s book, I wondered about you. When you think of yourself as a tech lead, do you, deep down, still see yourself as an individual contributor software engineer?
If you do, then the tech lead activities I recommend (especially the Four Core), might be uncomfortable at best—a slog at worst. For example, truly listening to your team might be a chore if you’re really “just a software engineer” at heart and can’t wait to get back to your desk to code. Tracking and adjusting will be tedious, to say the least, if you’d rather just be writing code.
Furthermore, you’re going to focus on the missteps and discomfort that come with early days on the role as evidence that you’re not really a good tech lead—that you’re fundamentally an engineer at heart.
On the other hand, if you see yourself as a tech leader, then those additional leadership tasks, like listening, being active and engaged, crafting visions, and the dozens of other things you’ll have to do, aren’t going to feel like such chores.
It’s not that you won’t still see yourself as a software engineer Instead, you can be be consistent with who you are as a software engineer—an engineer who can now lead. When you see yourself this way, you’re going to want to get better. You’re going to start to see evidence that you can do it. Leadership is going to become a habit, which will lead to great things.
That seems like a particularly powerful thought to share. Let me know, tech lead!
Have a great start to your week.
-michael
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