Your imagination is powerful, but sometimes it can lead you in the wrong direction. This idea of creating a fiction for ourselves is incredibly powerful, and unfortunately, it can also be debilitating. That's what we're talking about in today's episode. My name is Jonathan Cottrell. You're listening to Developer Tea. My goal on this show is to help driven developers just like you find your career purpose. You can do better work and have a positive influence on the people around you. That's the goal of the show, and hopefully we do that in a variety of ways. Sometimes we do it by getting at these deeper issues, these deeper questions of what it means to be an effective human being. That seems really broad, but it also is real. We have to look at, as we said in our last episode, we have to look at these problems that we face as developers. They're not software engineers. They're not engineering problems. They're human problems. Almost all of the time, what we learn in one area applies to another. If you're interested in that concept, go and listen to that previous episode, the one that we released on Monday. But for today's episode, I want to discuss this idea of fiction and the idea of imagination and why it's so powerful, first of all, and secondly, how it can be kind of dangerous if we're not careful. So I want to... kind of give you a moment to experience this for yourself. I want you to imagine that tonight, whenever you're listening to this episode, or maybe tomorrow night, I want you to imagine some meal that you're going to have, whether you're going to cook it or order it in, and I want you to imagine it in as clearly vivid detail as you can. You know, what plate are you going to use? Are you going to eat out of the to-go container? Are you going to use plastic, or are you going to use metal silverware? Will you have... a soda? Are you going to have tea or water? Are you going to, you know, watch TV while you eat your dinner, or are you going to sit on a porch, or are you going to eat it on a train on your way home from work or something like that? So imagine in clear, vivid detail, and I want you to add to this. Add the smells that you're smelling, add the sights that you're likely to see, the things that you're likely to hear, and the... even the feeling. The temperature of the room, or maybe the texture of the couch that you're sitting on. All of these things you can imagine. It's kind of an amazing thing, our imagination. It allows us to create a story, and even if it never has happened before, you drawing conclusions about your previous experiences, maybe you're using previous experiences to create this vivid, detailed imagination. I want you to imagine the process of that eating, right? How long is it going to take you? How often will you take a bite? What part of the meal is going to be your favorite? What memories will this experience evoke? What kinds of connections in your mind are you going to make? What was the last time you ate this particular meal? What kinds of people do you associate with it? This is an amazing thing that you can do. It's truly incredible. It's incredible how vivid and how detailed we can be with our imagination. And as it turns out, this weaving of a story, this is very similar to what a fiction author might do to create a story, maybe a book or a TV show or a movie or something, right? So this fiction idea is supported by our powerful imagination. And the crazy thing is, our brains have a pretty hard time differentiating. And so we have to be able to differentiate between our imagination and the real experience. That's how powerful imagination is. We actually have similar responses to just thinking about something as we do to actually doing that thing. There's a variety of examples of this. For example, you may have a mouthwatering right now thinking about that meal that you're going to eat. Or you may have kind of a melancholy sense. Because you're not thinking about that meal. You're not thinking about that meal. At all. At all. At all. At all. At all. At all. At all. At all. At all. At all. At all. At all. At all. At all. At all. At all. At all. At all. At all. At all. At all. At all. At all. At all. At all. At all. At all. At all. At all. At all. troll, and maybe even unimportant as a developer, that idea of imagination. And we allow other people to use their imaginations. But the thing is, we have to use our imaginations. Our imagination is not an art brush. That's not what it is. Our imagination protects us. At a core level, being able to imagine is fundamentally being able to predict. Being able to predict something that's going to happen in the future. So for you to imagine something is for you to create and construct all of the associated realities that would have to support that thing. And as a secondary process, your brain can then judge that created imagination. You have this opportunity to judge it. So in the book, Thinking Fast and Slow, there's a discussion on this exact topic. I'm going to talk about it right after we talk about today. I'm going to talk about today's sponsor, Linode. Linode is a Linux service provider, but they're so much more than that. And I'm really excited that they've decided to pair up with Developer T because I love this idea of having developers that are creating resources for other developers. And that's what Linode is. They have a team of developers that are even writing articles for you to learn more about your server and how to manage your server. They have APIs for you to spin up new nodes, for example. Or scale up. There's tons of incredible resources that go beyond just having a server in the cloud. So I want you to go and check it out, especially if you are a new developer and you're looking for resources. That's one group. And the other group is if you're a managing developer and you're looking for high memory plans. Linode has excellent offerings in this area. And their plans start at $5 a month, which gets you a gigabyte of RAM. And they're going to give you $20 a month. So I want you to go ahead and check it out. And I'm going to give you a gigabyte of RAM. And they're going to give you a gigabyte of RAM. And they're going to give you a gigabyte of RAM. So that's the first experience. Before we even have the opportunity to, in real life, experience what we're imagining, our brains kind of simulate that experience beforehand. And in Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman writes about this concept of thinking of a flying pig. When somebody presents this idea to you, flying pig, immediately your brain has to imagine this pig, animal, right? Whatever size pig, for example. Right? You're accustomed to seeing when you hear the word pig. And imagine it flying. And your brain kind of involuntarily does this. And then after the fact, you have the chance to observe that imagination. And it very clearly is easily rejected, right? You've never seen a pig fly. But because your brain doesn't really have a voice in whether or not it's going to imagine this, when somebody says pig flying, it's going to be a pig flying. Right? And you're not doing it cognitively. You're not doing it on purpose. But you're actually walking through that process, whether you want to or not. Of course, the other kind of imagination is the one that I provided to you earlier. It's kind of meditative imagination, where someone is prompting you to imagine things. But the interesting part of what we did with that exercise is that you probably imagined parts and pieces of that process. And it's almost impossible that you had the same exact imagined experience as someone else. So in that moment, when you are intentionally creating an imagination, even then, in a controlled way, your imagination is going to be unique from another person's. So you create this vision. You experience what is going to happen if this thing comes true. And then your brain... Your brain actually kind of gives you that simulated feeling. What is it going to be like? And by imagining this, and because your brain can validate what it believes to be realistic in this imagination, right? By creating this imagined future and your brain validating it, you've now created a potential bias towards believing that that thing could come true. And this is important because... This can be used to our advantage, right? We can imagine ourselves becoming healthier and allowing our brains to validate the steps that it would take to become healthier. Like, for example, we want to exercise more. We want to eat better food. We want to spend more time with our family and friends or whatever the thing is that we want to do. We can imagine those things and then our brains give us instructions on how to make that feasible, right? Right. We interpolate between our current situation and whatever it would take to get to that, to that imagined future. So it can be used for good. But if we're not careful, our imaginations can be used certainly for bad. And not in a nefarious way, not in an intentionally bad way, but instead in an accidentally bad way. So I'll give you a very simple example and then you can use this information to come up with your own. Okay. Your own examples. But one example of this is trying to decide what kind of criteria or what kind of experience, what kind of person would it take to get a particular job. And immediately, we all have a different schema in our brains. We all have a different way of thinking about this particular subject. What are the minimum requirements? What kind of information? What kind of personality? What is the position of a person in terms of where do they live? In relation to the place that they're working? You know, what kind of things do they need to be familiar with? We even have things imagined that create bias like age. Right. We have a lot of this predetermined imagined reality of what it would take to get a job as a developer. And this can really become a problem for developers who are trying to get a job. Right. For developers who they haven't gone into the industry yet. And everyone around them is propagating the ideas that you definitely need a degree to be a software developer. This is a common imagined reality. You definitely need to know X, Y, and Z about algorithm construction. Or you must have had experience of X years or more with language X, Y, or Z. And this can become truly problematic because this idea of imposter syndrome. When your imagined reality doesn't line up with your true reality. Right. Doesn't line up with your actual experience. Then you've created this imagined fiction of what a developer is. And because you don't match that imagined fiction, that disparity creates some sense of anxiety. This is a problem. And this is something that we have to be able to recognize. That our imaginations are powerful. But they also. Come with responsibility. We need to be able to recognize when our imaginations are feeding us. A true story. Or a story that has only part truth. Or if they're feeding us something altogether fiction. And this is very important for developers. It's important for everyone to start beginning to get a grasp on this. Using imagination to your benefit. But also being certain that as you imagine things, you're not creating bias. In the world. In the wrong directions. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of Developer Tea. Thank you again to today's sponsor, Linode. Go and check out Linode if you are looking for high memory plans. Or if you're a brand new developer and anything in between. Truly. Linode has an offering that will fit your needs. Speck.fm slash Linode. They're going to give you $20 worth of credit. If you use the code DeveloperTea2018. Thank you again to Linode for sponsoring today's episode of Developer Tea. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoy this topic. And if you've enjoyed the topics that we've covered so far this year. I highly encourage you to subscribe in whatever podcasting app you use. There's a ton of reasons to do so. Number one, it's free. So you really don't have anything to lose. Number two, you can unsubscribe anytime. So once again, you don't have anything to lose. And you have so much to gain. If you only become 1% better because of this podcast. Then isn't the 15 minutes or so that you spend listening to this two or three times a week. Isn't that worth? Your time? I'd suggest that you roll the dice on that. See if it helps you. And if it doesn't, then feel free to unsubscribe. But you'll never know how it could have helped you. Unless you take that step. So thank you so much for listening. And until next time, enjoy your tea.