Fear of failing to meet expectations, for programmers.
Commonly, a person wants to be accepted by the people around them. I believe this desire is in our genes. Just like how most people fear snakes even though they have never confronted one, we have the fear of failing to meet people’s expectations in our genes. And it is so strong in some people that they fail to live a normal life. You may have been suffering from it unknowingly. You may have often had experiences of severe stress during your work and cannot identify its root cause. It can cause you an anxiety disorder, work phobia, and eventually, depression.
Let’s consider the effect of the fear of failing to meet expectations by example situations.
Situation #1 Toxic Environment
John is a software project manager at age 35. He was an engineer before changing his career path last year as he found he is not quite good as an engineer.
Due to his age and years of experience, his boss and colleague expect him to be very responsible and have high competency in many ways. But he has his situation. He is not as very good as expected. He does not know a good software development process. He also is not very good with time management. Even though he has been trying so hard, none of his work meets the team’s expectations. His boss and colleagues often make harsh comments about his work and his incompetency.
Eventually, John cannot continue the work. He decides to change his career completely and never get into the software development business again.
Situation #2 Friendly Environment
Alex is a junior software developer. He is average as a programmer. He knows basics programming stuff and got average grades in college. But he is very friendly and has good relationship skills.
Alex is open that he is not a very good programmer, but he has high confidence that he can get any job done with some fair quality. His boss and colleagues know this very well, too. So no one has high expectations of him. They allow him to work in his comfort zone. However, Alex often surprises the team with the quality of work higher than the team’s expectation.
Alex is a successful programmer. He is always happy with his work. He never runs out of the motivation to improve himself. He reads a lot of books, joins many seminars, and involves himself in many projects. He eventually becomes a well-known skilled programmer in society.
Situation #3 Self-Toxic Environment
David is a new grad software developer joining a company. He is a born-to-be programmer. He loves programming. He got an A grade for every programming-related class in college. Though he is inexperienced, he always expects praise from others. He tries so hard to make everything perfect. He never says no to his boss and colleagues. He often feels guilty when his boss asks something he does not know.
He is in a good team, but he set himself a high bar. He always has stress when doing work even though no one place any high expectation on him.
Eventually, David develops work phobia and depression, he loses all the energy and motivation to involve in programming-related activities. Even though he loves programming, he does not understand why his work can hurt him this much.
Expectation VS Capability
In the example situations above, we can see that expectation management can be a critical factor for a person to become successful. In situation #1, we can see how John’s life is destroyed by unrealistic expectations from others. If only John can be in a friendly environment, who knows he may become a great project manager or anything he likes. Similarly, David has failed as a programmer by his illusion no matter how good he is at programming.
I would say that Alex becomes successful because he can bring himself into an environment in which expectations match his capability, and thus can achieve fun and challenges in work at the same time. This idea can be depicted in the following chart.
Later when Alex has developed enough skills, he can shift himself to the professional level by accepting work with high expectations.
Habitual Fear
If you are like David, you are hurt by your instinctive fear. Maybe it is in your genes like the fear of snakes passed down from our ancestors for some reason. It can be developed due to your own experience, similar to how you are afraid of ghosts because your parents told you a scary ghost story when you are a kid. Or maybe you have PTSD from being rejected.
Let’s call all of these phenomena a habitual fear. The primary characteristic is that it is irrational and out of your control. You know very well that there is nothing to be afraid of. You may have read a lot of books, got a lot of advice from your parents and friends. You completely agree with them, but you don’t know why you cannot get rid of the feeling.
According to my imagination (I don’t know psychology and biology), human has 2 systems for learning and responding to the surrounding environment.
System #1 Reasonable System
When confronted with an unknown challenge, humans have to try out some way to handle it, the result can be good or bad, and we memorize. If we keep confronting the same challenge over and over, we will have many chances to try out different ways and see different results. Eventually, it becomes our knowledge. When we have the knowledge, we can choose to respond to something based on it. Sometimes, we act automatically because our knowledge is so solid, but we can still trace back our experience to explain why we do that.
Sometimes we have errors in our system. For example, you may have the knowledge, due to your experience, that all politicians are bad, so you avoid talking to any politicians. But later when learning that it is not that easy to judge that someone is bad, you begin to open your mind and talk to some politicians. In the reasonable system, you can always use new information to update your knowledge to fix errors in your thoughts and actions. But that is not possible in the next system.
System #2 Habitual System
When you repeat the same challenge so many times and the result is constant, your knowledge becomes your instinct and the trace of the experience fades away. It becomes your habit. You do it without asking why anymore. If something prevents you to complete your habit, you feel bad unexplainably. The habit eventually encodes itself into your genes and pass down to your descendants. Your children can no longer reason about why they act or feel in some way, it is in their genes.
Some experience is so important or fatal that our system bypasses the need to repeat them before encoding them into a habit, such as in the case of PTSD. But the effect is the same, you automatically act or feel in some way unreasonably, and it is out of your control.
Let’s come back to the point, if you are suffering from a habitual fear, mere reasoning and information are not enough to fix your problem. What you need to do is to overwrite your instinct. You have to rebuild the reasonable system. You have to face your fear over and over until your instinct is assured that it is not scary.
Don’t Avoid The Situation
So don’t give up. Don’t run away from what is hurting you. You are not stuck, you are improving.
Trust And Unconditional Acceptance
I know it is easier said than done, but knowing the direction is a big step. I can only tell you the direction because I don’t know how myself. But there is a key idea that has helped me overcome many difficult situations. It is the idea of trust.
I have learned that trust is the opposite of fear. You are afraid that people will hate you because you cannot make yourself trust that they will not. It is the evil inside you that you see through your mind when you look at people. You have to trust that people are good by nature. Even though they may hurt you sometimes, it is not because they think you are ugly. They have their own problem and situation just like you. Keep repeating this over and over until your genes hear your voice.
Also, you are not deserved to be hated just because you are incapable of something. Don’t hide your incompetence. People trust us when they know what we can and CAN NOT do. In the same way, don’t be harsh to others just because they cannot do something.
Final Advice
Making a crappy work full of fun is better than perfect work out of fear. When fear pushes you to work, it is slavery, not responsibility.
