You know when you pour your heart and soul intro writing a thought leadership piece about the new era of work in the digital age, proudly offering it forth like a new baby you just birthed, only to have your client respond blithely with “Mmmmmm…. nope”? That’s happened to you right? No?
Being a writer is almost entirely a lesson in remaining humble. Partly this is because writing is so subjective. That piece may have been brilliant, but the milk in your boss’s coffee was sour this morning. Also, you’re just never as good as you think you are. Often, when I sit with feedback, I later realize, “She had a point.”
I was listening to this podcast about the Dunning-Kruger Effect, which is when people who are wrong really, really think they are right. (This phenomenon is often used to explain Trump’s election. Hey, I’m just the messenger.) I wondered how often I am Dunning-Krugering.
My husband and I get into a lot of toddler-related arguments during which he accuses me of “always having to be right” and I genuinely insist that he’s wrong. (Which is exactly his point.) It’s not that I “always have to be right.” It’s that I usually AM right. Different. And not my fault. I’m just smart. Or am I? Not according to Dunning and Kruger.
I’m also a six, which is the sign on the enneagram that is constantly plagued with self-doubt. This makes toddler-rearing extra challenging for me because you have to really stand by your decisions with 2.5-year-olds. I often regret telling them “You can’t climb on the table!” or “Don’t touch the knob on the record player!” because then they definitely do it even more and I have to stand by my initial decision when I’m actually so tired I hardly care. Ten minutes later I find myself thinking, why didn’t I want her to play with the knob on the record player, again? I mean, it would be a lot easier to let her play with the knob on the record player than to stand here telling her over and over again not to.
I know that “toddlers love boundaries.” I know they have to know I’m in charge. All I’m saying is, maybe I’m not the best person for that job?
Case in point: I have been in denial about potty training them for a very long time. We gave it a brief go back in the winter, but with wall-to-wall carpeting in almost every room of our house, I decided maybe we should wait until we moved. And besides, they seemed so anxious about it.
I joked with a lot of people that I was going to just let them potty-train themselves when the time was right. “That’s not a thing,” was the universal advice I was given, including from the seminal potty-training textbook Oh Crap! which literally said “Oh so you think your kid is going to potty train herself? You’re an idiot. Get a grip.”
Touche. But I persevered in my denial. When we arrived in Vermont I told myself “We’ll potty train them once we’re unpacked and they’re settled.”
A month and a half later.
In the meantime, both of my kids took it upon themselves to start using the potty on their own. Phoebe will wander off, and next thing I know, the potty is full of pee. Last night, Eliza peed on the toilet with the most genuinely gleeful laugh of all time. It was glorious, and slightly weird.
Another thing I’ve been writing about lately for my technology clients is Lean Thinking methodology, which is when you organize the human activities in your work environment so that things are more useful, efficient, and ultimately impactful (a word the business world loves and I have to admit I hate) in the greater world.
This term keeps coming up with clients from different industries, not just my technology clients. I think it also applies well to my potty training philosophy. I am thinking of working it into a white paper soon.
“Oh so you think your kid is going to potty train herself? You’re an idiot. Get a grip.” I know you didn’t write it, but where you dropped it in-hells bells-I did what’s known as a guffaw.