How I balance the voices in my head
another krappy newsletter #32
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Look at me sending an email at not 11:59pm PST?
Pretty impressive, right?
One might even get the impression that I have my shit together.
However, that is not the case. I just have more time on my hands this week because I am transitioning between jobs. Don’t worry, it is a happy job transition!
I am not going to give job specifics here because I have trust issues. Of course it is easy enough for you to LinkedIn stalk me and find it. But I subscribe to the opinion that people are lazy and won’t do that. Like you are in this one app in your phone, why would you go to a different app to check that out? Seems like a lot of effort to undertake to find out that I haven’t updated my LinkedIn. Joke would really be on you.
One day I will write more publicly about what I do after I have thoroughly convinced myself that it does not pose any harm to my career. However, today is not that day.
So I am going to keep it vague.
I was a hardware engineer at a really big company where the products spent a lot of time on the ground.
Now, I am going to be a hardware engineer at a small company where the hardware spends a lot of time in the air.
It is an exciting time.
If you write to me and ask me about the role, I will respond and tell you more.
As always, I continue to speak for myself here at another krappy newsletter. I am never speaking for who I am employed by.
We have an experiment today on the newsletter.
I am sharing a single long form essay on balancing the voices that play in my head all day long. Just pure me being broadcast to you. No curated list of fun links or anything. My digital minimalism experiment has made it harder to consistently come up with those types of listicles (side note: if you have any interesting links to share that you would like me to read or feature in this newsletter, let me know!)
On to the newsletter!
How I balance the voices in my head
Trash talking Ted vs. Vulnerable Vern
I have two voices that speak to me nonstop.
One voice is a trash talking Long Islander named Ted. The other voice is a vulnerable, artsy personality named Vern. I think he is from Brooklyn.
Ted harshly criticizes everything and is a very abrasive personality. He thinks feelings are gay and that if you get hit in the face during dodgeball your team should automatically lose. Nothing I show him is good enough. Nothing anyone shows him is good enough.
Vern is more in touch with his feelings. He empathizes and connects deeply with people. He is kind to me. He thinks the fact that anyone creates anything is amazing. He’s like the parent that gives out participation trophies. Super soft. Knows nothing about winning.
The two of them talk to me during exercise:
"You fuckin' pussy, you are not going to stop with 30 seconds left to go!"
-Ted
"It is so awesome that you got on the bike today!"
-Vern
They talk to me after heated phone calls:
"I bet if you go over to that douchebag's desk right now, you could scare him into never talking like that to you again"
-Ted
"I just don't understand why he was so rude to you. You did not deserve that. You are great. You are strong. You are powerful. You contain multitudes!"
-Vern
As you can see, Ted needs sensitivity training and Vern needs to sack up.
However, they are both integral pieces of my mind that I need to nurture to live a sane life.
Trash Talking Ted’s world
As a baseline, I listen to Ted entirely too much. Most people would associate me with this avatar.
I embody the critic. I shut out the emotional Vern voice and I charge forward. I dominate whatever is put in front of me. Execution is top of my mind. Fuck my feelings. Those just make me weak and stop me in my quest for domination. Whatever that means. No time for questioning. Only time for executing.
When I listen to Ted too much, I am a perfectionist and that comes with its pluses and minuses.
Notable ups of perfectionism:
Competence. I have a very high quality bar for the work I do. That usually translates to other people seeing me as "competent". Which, despite what you may read on the Internet, is important. If you are viewed as competent in someone's eyes, it becomes much easier to work with that person. They trust you more. They are more open to hearing out your ideas. Life is easier.
Obsession. When something lights me up, I get obsessed. I will in short order learn more about that topic than most people on the planet. I will hold conversations with people who work in that field and surprise them at how knowledgable I am on that subject. If they lived in my body though, it would not surprise them. I am obsessed with that topic. I have consumed 5 books and 10 podcasts on that subject at this point. My obsessive tendencies allow me to succeed at some things quickly like grasping some subject I knew nothing about, losing 20 pounds in 43 days, or releasing 32 consecutive weeks of a long form newsletter about nothing. Obsession gets results.
Notable downs of perfectionism:
Living 24/7 with a world class shit talker. I harshly criticize everything. I carry this personality trait with me to everything I do. Diets, exercise, computer programming, hardware design, synchronized swimming, you name it. Whatever I am doing, I am barraged with a soundtrack of "this sucks" or "why do you even bother? You aren't even good at this." For example, my writing workflow looks like write, rewrite, delete, edit, throw it away because it sucks, write, rewrite, delete, edit...ad infinitum (which means hella long in Latin).
Nothing I do is ever good enough to satisfy this quick talking New Yorker that lives in my head. He picks everything apart and is BRUTAL. And it is not just to me. No one is safe. I am constantly reminding myself not to be an asshole. Often times, people will ask how I came up with that comment that just completely decimated some random person being rude. Well. This shit talking runs in my background processor 24/7. I have been alive for 30 years. So I am about 260,000 hours into my shit talking practice. It takes 10,000 hours to become a master of something. So yea. I am a master of mean spirited comments.
Never starting. This critic is my worst enemy. He can stop me from starting something because he is so mean. Since the easiest way to avoid the shit talk is to stay in my comfort zone and never try anything new. I will find myself pushing things I want to do off week after week. "You don't even know how to solder" or "You aren't even good at writing why bother?" Ted loves comparing me to some impossible standard that I cannot achieve right now. According to Ted, if you cant make it into the NBA, why would you go play in Europe? Let alone play a pickup game at the YMCA.
Vulnerable Vern’s world
The opposite of a perfectionist is a vulnerability pornstar (VP).
I characterize a lot of people on social media as VPs. They release shitty Tweets, blog posts, podcasts, etc (note my inner critic coming out to shine here).
They might even know they are bad. But they do it anyway.
This is what I would become if I listened exclusively to Vulnerable Vern. Haphazardly sharing anything and everything that comes to the top of my mind.
This approach has its pluses and minuses as well.
Notable ups of VP:
Always iterating and having fun. The VP is forever focused on getting things off of their mind and in front of people's eyes. They are constantly trying new things and having a lot of fun in the process. Feedback (provided it is listened to) helps them move closer to "perfect" than when they started. Perfection is a mirage after all. There is no such end state as perfect. We construct it in our minds. Often times we do that to ensure that we never try something that might not work. The VP moves forward whereas the perfectionist stays stuck in his own world, stewing with his thoughts, and spinning his wheels.
Getting started. In order to get good at something you need to get started. VPs have no issue getting started. They have no issue looking stupid. They know that if you start figure skating, you need to first learn how to skate and see if you even like it first. But if you are a perfectionist, the fact that you can't land a triple salchow right now is so devastating to your fragile ego that you don't ever figure out how to skate. Yes. The pun was intended. And yes I know more about figure skating than you think I do. Know that.
Notable downs of VP:
Shiny object syndrome. A lot of VPs I follow tend to pinball from new idea to new idea, but never implement anything for longer than a week. Sure you have no issues getting started, but what about deliberately sticking with something and getting better at it week over week? My super power when I am leaning into my perfectionist bend is that I can obsess over something and do it for months or even years. I rarely see people who have no issues getting started also have no issues sticking with it.
Surround yourself with sycophants. A lot of VPs end up surrounded by people who just tell them what they are doing is great. Often times it is not. They need feedback. They need someone to tell them why something sucks and how they can improve. But this group tends to weaponize self love and compassion to shield themselves from actually getting better at something. They drink so much self love Kool Aid that they will never listen to feedback about how to get better and will forever be relegated to slightly better than beginner.
Who is right?
Neither Vern nor Ted is correct. They have a lot to learn from one another.
Do not falsely assume linearity. More of one is not always better.
The key is to find the sweet spot where I am passing a minimum quality bar whilst not sitting on something forever because "I am not ready" or it does not meet my definition of "perfect".
I need to cultivate an internal state that allows both voices to be heard.
Which is hard! Cause Vern is a little bitch. He backs down to Ted often. Sometimes he doesn't chime in because Ted hurt his feelings. He will sit out for years waiting for me to coax him back out with some positive creative vibes.
How I think about balancing these two personalities
It depends on context.
If I am doing something that is high stakes, I embrace my inner perfectionist. For example, let’s say I am communicating to an executive at work. Welp. Trash talking Ted is now free to move about the cabin whilst Vern needs to keep his fucking seatbelt on. Why? Because this is the big time, baby. Every extra word should be scrutinized. I should distill the best of the best from my mass of thoughts on the subject and only share what is relevant. No executive cares about your feelings, Vern. I love you, but shut up and go think about what joke we are going to tell later.
If I am starting something new, I lean more into the vulnerability pornstar. Vern needs to be given space to try this out and be coddled for a bit. “Try it out and see if you like it!” and “it is Ok to suck at this right now.” I wrestle Ted to the ground and put a muzzle on him for a bit. I let Vern be the change he wants to see in the world (or whatever he says). Then after I try the new thing for long enough, I assess if I want to continue working on that skill. If I find it is something that I really like and want to get better at, I bring Ted in. Now that it is started and Ted can't ground it before it ever takes off, I give it to him to obsess over and get better at.
As an example, when I started this email newsletter, I had to focus hard on shutting up Ted and getting this going. I did that by cultivating a small group of people at first to read it. I purposely created an echo chamber where I wouldn't be exposed to critical thoughts. Criticism at this stage would have completely destroyed any and all passion I had for continuing on with the newsletter. I needed kind people to say nice things until I got it to a level where I felt comfortable with putting myself out there. Then and only then could I expand the distribution.
Now this newsletter goes out to 20x more people than it did when it started. I have handed the reins over to Ted and he is liking it. I let Vern get a say every now and again as I change up the format and experiment with talking about different topics. But it is much easier now since both of them are onboard.
Whatever works?
This might sound like the ramblings of an insane person, but this is how my mind works.
My incredibly skilled internal shit talker is a blessing and a curse as he propels me to become better at something, but often times stops me from starting new things. My artsy vulnerable side is fun loving and creative, but if I let the shit talker berate him too much, he disappears for long periods of time and the fun in my life evaporates away.
The question I will forever struggle to answer is: How do I get the best of this critic without letting him demoralize my creative side into stasis?
Closing time
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