24 \ May 2019 \ http://www.phparch.com
Philosophy and Burnout, Part One
Community Corner
This is why diverse teams that commu-
nicate well and can be a bit vulnerable
with each other solve problems more
effectively. Their collaboration benefits
from each of their varied answer spaces.
“An external touchstone of truth
is the comparison of our own judg-
ment with those of others, because
what is subjective will not dwell in
others alike.”- Immanuel Kant
Basically, Kant is saying to check
yourself before you wriggedy-wreck
yourself, it’s a good idea to run things
by other people. While you might lead
yourself down a nonsense path, you’re
very unlikely to accidentally lead a
bunch of different people down the
same nonsense path.
If we compare what we think is right
with what other people think is right on
the same subject, then we’re a lot more
likely to come out to the actual truth of
the matter or at least a more functional
version of the truth of the matter.
Keep in mind that those using the
same or similar schools of thought
cannot offer the same value of compar-
ison as those whose perspective comes
from outside of our thinking frame-
work.
If you went to the same coding
bootcamp as somebody else, they’re
probably going to be thinking along
the same lines, and that will super limit
their ability to check your process.
If you’re talking to somebody who
has a totally different background—
who maybe has expertise in the thing
that you’re talking about but came to it
from a different life path—they’re going
to see things that you’re not going to see.
These insights from others with
different answer spaces from our own
are super valuable at every point in
the creative process. Even when we
are tackling something we don’t know
yet, but can learn, someone who has
already learned what we’re pursuing
can accelerate our process, and if their
background is different from our own,
they may have already spotted and
cataloged flaws and dangers with the
knowledge we’re pursuing that would
have remained opaque to us if not
pointed out.
For example, someone with a back-
ground in accessibility design might
be able to explain the ways in which
the framework we’re learning will
create inaccessible websites as well as
how to mitigate those design flaws. Ifour background had never led us to
consider those concerns, we might not
have even noticed the problem until
users reported them. Worse yet, we
might have never seen and thereby
invisibly lost our client users by creating
a site that many couldn’t use.Perspective
Development is fundamentally about
people. When we’re creating projects
that serve people well in ways we value,
we find our work fulfilling. When we
get lost in self-criticism for what we
don’t know, or create substandard or
even harmful projects because of what
we can’t know, our dissatisfaction
grows. When we don’t take care of that
feedback loop by practicing a healthy
philosophical understanding, that
dissatisfaction can consume us with
what we call burnout.
In the next post, we’ll look at some of
the brain traps people fall into because
they might look and feel reasonable at
first glance—logical fallacies—and how
to avoid them.Margaret Staples is delighted to serve Seattle developers as
well as PHP and underrepresented developers all over the
world as a Developer Evangelist at Twilio. Margaret is a
consistent producer of code, philosophy, and attitude. She’s
happy to help with all things Twilio, and looks forward to
learning about the neat stuff you’re building @dead_lugosiRelated Reading
- Leveling Up: Procrastination and Burnot by David Stockton. June 2017.
https://phparch.com/magazine/2017-2/june/ - The Dev Lead Trenches: Burning Out by Chris Tankersley. October 2018.
https://phpa.me/oct-2018-burning-out