we're talking about self-coaching self-coaching this idea that you can adopt a mindset or you can adopt a a mental state you can put on a hat uh we talked about in the first episode in the series we've done three of these uh including this one we talked about in the first episode the idea of de bono's thinking hats and this is quite similar to the de bono's thinking hats exercise a little bit different in that our hats might combine uh multiple of those kind of basic more basic or or uh principled uh lower level hats i suppose right so you can see multiples uh of those different aspects or or perspectives coming into each of the ones that we've talked about here we talked about for example the uh the available manager all right the voice of the available manager that was the first episode uh in the last episode we talked about the voice of the hyper optimizer uh these these combine a lot of different perspectives into a persona that you use to try to give yourself insight and the idea is not that you actually adopt these permanently or that you try to act like any one of these but instead you use these as a a backdrop for your uh your self-discussion your journaling however you reflect you use these voices as a a way to prompt yourself right this is the idea of self-coaching so in today's episode i'm going to a voice called the shoulder socrates yes i did make this up but it's not an incredibly uh unique concept um but hopefully hopefully you can remember shoulder socrates a little bit easier uh than just remembering the concept itself and the idea is that any any statement that you make any argument that you make any uh assertion or position that you take they all can be questioned all of these positions all of the information all of the requests that you bring all of this can be questioned and we're going to use this particular uh voice to do that now it might sound like this is going to be a negative voice like it's somebody who is standing by your side telling you to prove everything or uh some somehow antagonistic and that's not going to be a negative voice it's going to be a negative voice and that's going to actually not the case and we're going to talk about why right after we talk about today's sponsor you might believe when i say website builder that this is for amateurs that it's limited control you could never do real work with that but what if i said you could have a website builder that has a developer centric experience using node and adding full stack javascript code to any site with wix studio you can spend less time on ui coding hosting and security and more on the custom logic and the functionalities that truly matter to you and your business develop in your preferred coding environment whether that's online and a vs code based ide or locally through a github either way with wix studio you can spend less time on ui coding and more on the custom logic and the functionalities that truly matter to you and your business develop in your preferred coding environment either way with wix studio you can spend less time on ui coding and the functionalities that truly matter Studio you're deploying in just a click. 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The name comes from, by the way, the idea of the Socratic method, which was primarily based on asking questions in order to enlighten other people and teach them. So how does this work? Well, really in your self-talk, try to write down whatever assertions or claims are the basis of what you're saying. So let's say, for example, that you're struggling to feel like your contributions are valuable. The shoulder Socrates might ask the question, well, what constitutes a valuable contribution? And you may go down the road of answering this question and eventually getting to the crossroads where you're identifying what's missing in your mind. So what's missing in your mind? So maybe a valuable contribution. Let's say that you just became a brand new manager. This is a very common situation. A manager tends to feel like they're not really sure if the work they're doing is valuable. And so they'll try to define what valuable really means. And part of the reason why managers tend to feel this way is because what has been valuable in the past in their role, which is delivering code or, you know, whatever, whatever other metric they've been able to use in their role, they've been able to use it in their role. And so they're going to try to define what valuable is. And so they're going to try to define what valuable is. And so they're going to try to define what valuable is. And so they're going to try to define what they've used to define personal success in the past is no longer necessarily the case. And so defining what is valuable can tend to be pretty productive for these people, especially because they don't have the same feeling that they used to have. Previously, they were doing a job where they were delivering tickets, and now they're not delivering tickets. And so that muscle memory can make you feel like you're not doing your job, so to speak. And so the shoulder Socrates in this, in this case, is helping you identify that, hey, actually, the thing that used to be your job is no longer relevant, or at least it's not directly relevant to the work that you're doing now. And so in this way, this, this persona is not necessarily always antagonistic. However, it can be antagonistic, but it should be productively antagonistic. So in other words, if you are, let's say you're an engineer, and you, are making the argument that your team needs to spend some time working on improving your testing strategy, then the shoulder Socrates would say, why? Why should we improve our testing strategy? Now, interestingly, what you're doing by engaging in this questioning or counterfactual method is you're testing the content of your own ideas. So the, the question, the question here is, is why it's not necessarily a counterfactual, but you may provide your why. Right? So you might say, our code coverage is, you know, lower than we think is necessary. And we believe that, you know, improving coverage is going to, I don't know, increase our reliability as we continue making changes in the future. Now, the counterfactual might look something like, well, we're not seeing production fall apart. We're not actually having a negative business impact yet from not having these tests. So you're asking to improve something that is already good enough. Can you tell me why we should improve something that's already meeting a necessary threshold when we have other priorities to spend our time on? And so these are questions that you probably would be asked anyway. The good thing here is that in this self-coaching process, you're asking yourself questions that your leaders or executives or, you know, your, your teammates might ask you anyway. And so you are preparing for those questions. You're kind of litigating your own beliefs upfront before you present them to other people. So it helps in, in providing the, the argumentation or in kind of asserting an opinion. It may actually change your opinion as well. You may actually, find yourself realizing that, you know what, actually my assertion here, when I actually test it or, or in a try to prove that I'm wrong, I actually can prove that I'm wrong. And so I'm not really sure why I'm holding this particular opinion or belief. And it's much easier. This is a critical point. It's much easier for you to do that self-reflection and change your opinion through your own processing than it is for you to change your opinion because someone else is pushing on you to do it. And so I'm not really sure why I'm holding this particular opinion because they may have taken theijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijij to us, it's much harder for us to change our own minds because of what somebody else is saying, and then much easier for us to change our own minds, right? This allows us to kind of avoid the social pain of some admission of incorrect, right? We really want to stay, you know, continue on with an expressed belief. We have this continuity bias or consistency bias. The idea is that we, you know, once we say we believe one thing, even if some evidence comes into the picture that should lead us to believe something different, it's very hard to adopt a new belief, especially if that original belief was expressed openly to other people. Now, this particular hat takes some practice. It takes some practice to be able to say, you know, practice. All of the hats that we're talking about wearing or the personas we're talking about adopting, they take a little bit of practice. And that's because you may not necessarily know how to produce a counterfactual when you first start out in the same way that you may not necessarily know what your manager has the agency to change. And so that very first persona we talked about, it may take some practice, may take some time kind of working with that persona. When you hear a, a question back from an assertion that you make that you didn't have the chance to consider beforehand, that's good feedback for you, right? That's good feedback for you to understand that, oh, wait a second, there was a counterfactual or there was a, you know, some kind of question that I didn't anticipate, that I didn't necessarily know was going to come and pay attention closely to, okay, what were the incentives for that question? Where did that question come from? What was the incentive for that question? And then you can kind of the thinking process that led that person to ask that question and then try to incorporate some of that thinking process, try to get into their mindset the next time you are playing shoulder Socrates. One last point on shoulder Socrates, it is important to know when to take him off your shoulder and put them on the shelf. In other words, you shouldn't be constantly trying to find counterfactuals, especially when you're trying to find counterfactuals. You're going to need to find counterfactuals, especially when you're in the process of communicating with other people. This can interrupt your thought process and can make you feel a little less than confident about what you're saying in the first place. If you're attempting to self-litigate in the process of talking to another person, then it's going to come across as a little bit scattered rather than what you're actually trying to do, which is present an idea that is hard, but you're going to be able to communicate with that person. And that's going to poke holes in or present an idea that seems very well thought out. That's what you're trying to do, most likely, by engaging the shoulder Socrates. But unfortunately, it's an interruptive pattern of communication, and it would be very difficult to do that, especially vocally, if you're talking to another person and you're also considering, okay, what kinds of questions might come up here? That is a very difficult thing to do, and it would be better to try to set that aside. Use that in your reflection time, but don't use it in your communication time, when you're communicating with teammates or with your boss or whoever else. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode of Developer Tea. Thank you again to today's sponsor, Wix. Gone are the days of the old website builders that were limited and produced quite awful results very often. And now... Now we have Wix Studio. Wix Studio's developer-first ecosystem allows you to spend less time on tedious tasks and more on the functionality and the logic that matters the most to you and your business. You can develop online in a VS Code-based IDE, or you can develop locally using whatever tools you're used to using GitHub. Extend and replace a suite of powerful business solutions and ship faster with Wix Studio's AI Code Assistant. All that is wrapped up in an automatically maintained infra for total peace of mind. Working at developer-first.com. Wix Studio.com. 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