My first blog post

So, here it is. My first blog.

I have been wanting to start a blog for a long time now but I have put off starting for a while now because starting something is hard. Especially when you want to form a habit and even more when it’s about self reflecting. Reflecting is always confronting and therefore hard.

So let me tell you why I wanted to start blogging. At my job we have what we call ‘personal growth talks’ every 3 months. Each employee has these individually with the CEO/founder and they are about how I have grown in the last months, if I met the goals that I have set for myself, how I plan to grow in the coming months, how I feel in the team and in terms of workload. There is also time to talk about how I feel my CEO can grow or if I think anything should change in the company.

I really love that we do these talks because it forces everyone to reflect on themselves and their surroundings, but also gives an opportunity for both ‘sides’ if you will, to give honest feedback on each other. Which I think is something you would normally hesitate to do.

One of my goals I set for myself after the last growth talk is getting more articulate. What I meant by that is getting better at explaining my ideas, getting better at asking the right questions so I’m always sure that when I’m having a conversation I am sure we’re talking about the same thing and when asking for feedback framing it correctly so I’m getting the feedback I wanted.

The reason I set that goal is that too often for my liking I find that when I’m having a conversation with someone on the team, at some point it turns out we’re talking past each other. Either we were talking about the same thing but thought we were in a discussion where we didn’t agree, or the other person has to ask lots of question before he knows what I’m trying to say. Another reason is that, on tuesday demo night, I often had the problem that when I showed a design I was working on I didn’t get the feedback I wanted. Either people didn’t know what to say, or they gave feedback on an irrelevant part of the design. I didn’t correctly frame it. I needed to explain what the design was, what the problem was I was trying to solve with it, for whom it was and what I wanted to know from the team.

All of these miscommunications brought me frustration, made conversations take unnecessary long and therefore time wasting, and didn’t bring me and the other(s) the value that it could potentially bring. On a case to case basis this wasn’t so bad but over months or even years I think me and everyone around me can benefit a lot from me being able to lead a more productive discussion.

I am aware that this is more of a long term goal and not something I can learn to do in a few months, if you can ever consider yourself done with learning this skill at all. But if I don’t start working on this now, then when?

One way I wanted to start learning this is reading up on the subject. I searched for some articles, even found an interesting Udemy course on public speaking and I even have one or two books about this at home which I need to read again.

Another way I wanted to practice this skill is to start writing a blog. About anything. Preferably things that keep me occupied during the weeks, either work related or personal. This way I can practice forming thoughts and bringing them into words, and take my time to do so. It takes away the stress of someone waiting for me to talk and me not being able to take something back to change it a little. I hope that at some point I will get better and more efficient at formulating thoughts and well argumented standpoints and I will be able to do that more quickly when talking to someone as well. A blog will also give me space for writing on my progress with asking better questions and keep that more top of mind. Often after a presentation I immediately realised what I could have done better but I just hadn’t thought about it before the presentation.

Since I’m not sure it’s enough to just practice and review myself I’m planning on publishing these online, so they’re easy to find for someone who may be reviewing me at some point. Also I hope it creates more of a commitment feeling on my end to actually keep publishing. I want to write twice a week to see if that is sustainable, but knowing myself the chance of quitting or skipping one is higher when it’s only in a folder on my computer and no one will know.

So to summarize, the challenge is going to be finding something to write about twice a week and just do it, getting more efficient in my writing meaning having to use less words to describe something clearly, and eventually getting more better at expressing my thoughts and feelings overall.

Step one: create a blog somewhere and post this.