I’ll be starting at a new job in a few weeks, and I’m doing a lot of reflecting on how to best set expectations for my coworkers. I’m realizing just how little language I really have for describing what works for me, and what really doesn’t.
I’ve also been doing a lot of reflecting on past job experiences. Especially at the beginning of my career, I ran into so many social situations at work that I didn’t understand. And so many misunderstandings ensued. I’ve put a LOT of effort over the years into learning how to work productively and enjoyably with other humans. In 2014 I quit my job in R&D to go to the three-month Recurse Center retreat for programmers in New York. The RC community follows explicit social rules that create a safe space for technical exploration, in a hugely diverse community of talented AND compassionate developers. Being in the RC community has reframed technical collaboration for me. I now see that healthy human dynamics always drive the best technical achievements and creativity. So it’s really worth getting the human stuff right, because it’s such an incredible force multiplier when you do!
But what I’ve realized is that even though I deeply appreciate the nuance in any given human interaction, I may also be getting a firehose of emotional data from my amygdala at the same time. That firehose is hard to work around sometimes, and requires me to process what I’m perceiving with someone. Most of the time I do that with my therapist, but it’s also helpful for me when coworkers normalize sharing of feelings and felt experience.
It’s helpful for me when coworkers normalize sharing of feelings and felt experience.
In my case, I have a hidden disability, that internally I have to ‘work around’ on a constant basis. When people make innocuous assumptions and implied expectations — things that are often just logical to do next — these can register as unwelcome constraints that create little panic attacks in my brain. It’s totally involuntary and not really about the project at all. It’s as though my brain is constantly working to maintain a delicate flow state, and exogenous demands sometimes register as a threat to that flow.
It’s as though my brain is constantly working to maintain a delicate flow state, and exogenous demands can register as a threat to that flow.
Lots of little panic attacks throughout the day really add up over time. The result of this involuntary response is that I effectively have a threshold on the number of demands I can accommodate in a given day. The stress I experience is additive, and can carry over from one day to the next. And it definitely slows me down to have a heightened sense of sustained vigilance. The more vigilant I feel I need to be, the more dramatic the slowdown. Sustained vigilance is a precursor to burnout for me.
The converse is mostly true as well though: the more safe I feel, the closer I get to flow state. For me, psychological safety is a prerequisite for working productively with other humans in the long term. And according to Google’s internal research, psychological safety is the single most important factor in predicting team success.
According to Google’s internal research, psychological safety is the single most important factor in predicting team success.
So maybe I’m not so different from everyone else after all??