Fearless Inventory

I've never worked a 12-step program, but I'm drawn today to step 4: "Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves." I've been taking a lot of tests and making a lot of lists lately, all aimed at identifying my skills and passions. What I noticed, though, is that none of the lists mentions any negative qualities. As an exercise, I set out to make a list of personality traits that fearlessly describe how I work.

The Big Book describes step 4 thus: "We searched out the flaws in our make-up which caused our failure." My intention is a little different. I'm not necessarily looking to fix the flaws in my make-up. I just want to become aware of them, the better to understand what I want in a new work environment.

We do this pretty easily with skills. "I'm no good with numbers," you might say, and that observation will lead you away from jobs like accounting and engineering. You might wish you were better at math, and you might at some point try to improve your math skills by taking a class or reading a book. But most of us accept that we're not good at something: working with people, animals, children, numbers, art, negotiating, mechanical things, etc.

But we're less likely to observe: "I like picking fights to feel superior." Or, "I need to have my ego stroked." Surely we're all not perfect moral characters any more than we possess every work skill. But somehow we're more afraid to admit character shortcomings, and less likely to observe them objectively. Maybe you wish you weren't the kind of person you are, and maybe you want to work on that. But knowing your flaws can lead you to the right career (or away from the wrong one) just as readily as knowing your skills. Someone who likes picking fights might make a great lawyer or negotiator, but would be terrible in customer service. The need for approval and acceptance has long been understood to be a "flaw" that makes for great salespeople or entertainers.

All of which is to say, here's some things that define how I am at work. I'm not proud of all of them, but I've used many of them to good ends, and I think the process of listing them out helps me better understand who I am, for better or worse.

• Knowing more than everyone else. I don't think of myself as very competitive, but I have to admit I like being the smartest guy in the room. In a lot of cases, that involves carefully selecting the right room. Lots of positive things come from this less-than-admirable trait: I love teaching, helping others figure things out, learning new skills, understanding systems deeply. All of it is, in part, in service of feeling superior.
• Having many tasks to choose from, so I can neglect some of them. I always thought I could move a mountain, if I just had a bigger mountain that I could avoid moving. If I had to put this on a resume, I suppose I'd make up a word like "prioritization," but really I like the freedom to pick my favorite task at the expense of another. I don't always choose the most important task to work on first, but I find over time that the right stuff gets done.
• Fixing things that weren't built right. Designing things is really hard. But criticizing and fixing something someone else made is easy. I'm not alone in this-- check out This Is Broken, Interface Hall of Shame, Bad Designs, etc. This even works on myself-- when I have to build something from scratch, I get paralyzed by the need to do it right. Eventually I convince myself that if I just build something that kind of sort of works, I can get on to the enjoyable task of fixing the broken thing I just made, and making it better.
• Not finishing anything. My bookshelf at home is full of interesting books, and I've read most of them. Which is to say, I've read most of one book, and most of the next book, and so on. I hate denouements-- as a kid, I don't remember ever asking, "And then what happened?" I can tie up the loose ends when I need to, but usually when I say, "I just need to finish up a few things," I'm probably about as done as I'll ever be.
• Being mostly left alone, but nudged occasionally. I like to be left alone to do my own thing, and hate being micromanaged. But I recognize that I need to be prodded from time to time, or I'll just drift off. Sometimes the nudging comes in the form of a deadline or status report, sometimes a commitment to a coworker-- if I know Bill needs my stuff to get his job done, I'll finish my part just to avoid leaving Bill high and dry. I need an environment that gently bugs me to move forward.
• Being the tortoise, not the hare. Here's what happens when I sit down for a focused, intense work session. Nothing. I stare, I doodle, I bribe myself. And then I play solitaire. I do stupid things, like read blogs I've already read. My reality is, I need time to stew over things, and I tend to work at about 30% all the time, instead of 100% from nine to five. I'm as likely to drift off in the middle of movie to think about a good problem as I am to drift away from a work session to watch a movie.

There's plenty more, I'm sure. It's not that I can't buckle down and do what needs to be done when it's called for-- this is just my natural baseline. The end results have pretty consistently gotten me plenty of professional accolades and glowing reviews, so they're hardly debilitating.

As I explore what I want to do next in my life, I'm going to look for environments that are compatible with these foibles without completely indulging them...