What if you found out that the things that you were investing in, the things that you thought were good for you, the things that you suspected you need more of, it's actually the opposite. That not only do you need less of them, but it's better if you had none of it at all. So we're talking about this paradox of perception on today's episode of Developer Tea. My name is Jonathan Cottrell, and my goal on this show is to help driven developers like you find clarity and perspective and purpose in their careers. One of the misconceptions that I had about this show when I started this podcast five years ago was that every episode needed to be better than the last. And this was a myth. This perception, a misconception of what this audience needs out of this podcast for a couple of reasons. The first reason is very simple. How do you decide between two episodes, which one is the best? The easy answer might actually be a substitution question. Which episode has more listens? Or perhaps the heuristic or the substitution that we make is, which episode has more listens? Which episode has the best feedback? Which episode is mentioned in reviews the most? Or which episode has the most chatter on Twitter? All of these are just proxies to quality, and there's no specific way to determine what episodes are unequivocally better than others. Of course, that's not to say that all episodes are then therefore equal to each other. There are episodes that I feel like are equal to each other. There are episodes that I feel much more proud of over time. But the misperception, the confusion that I had was that my pride or my feeling of investment or my feeling of quality, my perception of quality of the episodes was going to match up with everyone else's. My perception was that I needed to increase control and investment in every episode. But the truth was that I needed to let go of control and invest less in the episodes. Not because I didn't want to put more of my energy and time into caring for the episodes, but rather that if I tried to be a perfectionist about these episodes, then we wouldn't be able to publish this show on as regular of a basis. And the interesting factor here... is that some of the episodes where I felt rushed or even like the idea for the episode, the premise of the episode wasn't very good. Some of those episodes, I actually received very good feedback. You could argue based on those heuristics we talked about at the beginning, that some of those were my best episodes. So why am I telling you all of this? How does it matter to your career as a software engineer? First of all, I do want to mention the fact that this isn't true across the board. Not every podcast is optimized for delivering two or three episodes a week like this one is. But I want to talk about a specific measure that most software engineers will relate to, especially as your career moves forward. And that is control. And this is one of many things that we often have a confusion about. A perception that could be flipped on its head and many of us would benefit from that flipping. Our natural perception, most of us at least, is that as we gain more control, things will improve. As we have more influence, as we have more say over whatever is happening, as we have more information. And... As we have more power, things will improve. Our ability to affect our lives in a positive direction, or our ability to affect other people's lives in a positive direction, will increase as we gain more control. But time and time again, this shows to not be true. And probably for a few reasons. One of the first reasons that comes to mind is the fact that most control is actually an illusion. We aren't increasing our own agency most of the time. Instead, we are borrowing agency from someone else or something else. Or we're allowing ourselves to believe that we have more control than we actually have. How does this play out? As an example, you may eventually become a manager in your career and you might find yourself excited to... To... At least, you may find yourself excited to... At least, you may find yourself excited to... At least, you may find yourself excited to... At least, you may find yourself excited to... At least, you may find yourself excited to... At least, you may find yourself excited to... At least, you may find yourself excited to... At least, you may find yourself excited to... At least, you may find yourself excited to... At least, you may find yourself excited to... At least, you may find yourself excited to... At least, you may find yourself excited to... At least, you may find yourself excited to... At least, you may find yourself excited to... At least, you may find yourself excited to... At least, you may find yourself excited to... At least, you may find yourself excited to... At least, you may find yourself excited to... problems that tend to happen when we manage purely by the numbers. And this is only one example of how control can be an illusion. In this example, managing by the numbers creates very clear problems with those numbers. If you have incentives to make a given number move in a particular direction, then it's very likely that you're trading something else off. Or you may unknowingly be creating a false measure, some kind of gamified measure. And so this idea that we're controlling things more, that we're able to take those numbers and move them in the right direction by imposing our powerful position, for example, on other people, that that is somehow a controlling measure, it turns out to move us in the other direction. We get a picture of things that isn't clear. And this isn't a new problem. This isn't a problem that has come up since we started measuring things, measuring performance with data. This isn't new. It's not a modern problem. In fact, many philosophers talk about the idea that control is, in some ways, the source of suffering for many people. And so instead of telling you what to do on this episode, in the spirit of kind of giving up control, you're going to tell me what to do. And so instead of telling you what to do, I'd like to ask you a question and open up the floor for you to decide for yourself. What would happen if you gave up control? I want you to think of one specific scenario where you have the tendency to try to increase your influence, increase your position, maybe trying to shoot for the next promotion. Or maybe you're trying to get in with the right people. You're trying to get in with the right people. You're trying to get in with the right people. You're trying to leverage your relationships to get in with the right people. What would happen in that scenario if you were to, instead of seeking more control, find ways of giving up the control that you already have? Here's what tends to happen when we think about this question. We've conflated the ideas of responsibility and control. And so as a manager, you feel responsible for what you're doing. And so you're trying to give up the control that you already have. And so you're trying to give up the control that you already have. And so you're trying to give up the control that you already have. And so you're trying to give up the control that you already have. And therefore, in order to respond to your responsibility, you try to control things. You take things into your own hands. But very often, the most important things you can do when you are given responsibility is to accept the things that you simply don't have control over. If you seek ways of giving up control, then you can find areas where other people can become your ally. You can find areas where you can collaborate more clearly. And you can ultimately observe the numbers, observe that data that you want so badly to use as a tool. Instead, you can observe that data and then talk about how to respond to it together. Seek ways of giving up control. Play this thought experiment out in your head. It might be a little bit of a hard one. But if you're going to give up control, imagine what would happen if you suddenly had no control over your career path. The truth is, you probably don't have as much control over your career path as many self-help books might lead you to believe. And so what happens in that scenario? And what happens in the scenario where you don't have control over your career path? What is the next step that you take? For many people, the next step that we take, is to reach out to another person. When we give up control, we tend to band together. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode of Developer Tea. I hope this was a challenging discussion for you and perhaps a new way of thinking about control and about increasing your influence and how that can go wrong. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a review in the comments. And if you have any questions, please feel free to ask them in the comments. And if you have any questions, please leave us a review in the comments. And if you have any questions, please leave us a review in the comments. This is the best way to help other developers like you find and listen to Developer Tea. This episode and every other episode can be found on spec.fm. And this episode was produced by Sarah Jackson. My name is Jonathan Cottrell. And until next time, enjoy your tea.