 Reducing the volume, increasing the quality of information you consume. I love data in all forms. Radio, television, print, person to person, paper, touchscreen, monitor, it is all amazing. The world is an endlessly fascinating and constantly evolving place. More information is better right? That's what I thought in the past.
As a child I thrived on Treasure Island and other classics, moved into the Lord of the Rings trilogy and then on to any other real book I could get from real libraries, gifts and loans. Some of my best memories of childhood include reading and listening to recorded books or my parents reading to me. The soundtrack of my childhood was National Public Radio droning in the background. Moving from high school to college opened up a whole new world of print and online media options with the challenge of reading for my International Relations major and learning to use email and searching online content sources. As handheld devices became more prevalent I scaled up my information consumption, feasting on the wealth of information at my disposal.
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 Have you ever had a day when you seemed to work constantly, but had nothing tangible completed at the end of the day? Schedule a few evenly spaced meetings, check Slack and respond to emails as they come in, and your day can be eaten up by these light tasks. It is easy to feel busy and virtuous (reaching inbox zero!), but then we look up and realize we got nothing done on our most difficult and consequential products for the day. I have been there many times.
Every Social Sector professional has their own unique mix of interaction with people (management tasks, emails meetings), administration (forms, bills, time tracking), and creation (documents, graphics, analysis, problem solving) through deep and focused work.  Are you a maker or a manager? The question rarely has an easy answer. In his classic article Maker’s Schedule, Managers’ Schedule, Paul Graham defines makers as anyone in the workplace creating things like code, crafts or books. This maker approach requires long, unbroken segments of time throughout the day to produce these products. Managers divide their day into one hour or less segments and check in with a lot of different people and groups to make sure a project or goal is on track. Both roles are essential for any organization or social mission, but each requires a unique mindset, scheduling approach, and way of working. Graham himself works on a maker schedule, but also manages the Y Combinator, a group that helps form and launch new companies.
 This article is about identifying and overcoming imposter syndrome in the Social Sectors. This universal human impulse manifests in Social Sector professionals in a unique way. We talk about how to spot it, and then overcome it to do our best work.
Suzanne Imes and Pauline Clance identified this concept in the 1970s. Imposter Syndrome is the sensation of “...phoniness in people who believe that they are not intelligent, capable or creative, despite evidence of high achievement.” People experiencing imposter syndrome “are highly motivated to achieve, but “live in fear of being ‘found out’ or exposed as frauds.”  For the first 15 years of my career I told myself a story about money and wealth. That story went something like this:
“I don’t care about money. My work in international disaster response makes me a better person than others who worry about wealth. I care about the humanitarian imperative above all other things and therefore don’t have to think about planning for retirement. People who think about this are lame/money grubbing/narrow/self focused/boring. There is no way I can ever retire anyway because it's so expensive these days.” One secret fear cycle script was to compare myself, my career, my savings and wealth level to friends living conventional American private sector lives such as lawyers or in commercial real estate. I felt superior in my life choices and could not imagine life in a conventional private sector setting without the frequent jetting off to disaster zones, and feeling the intensity of a humanitarian response setting. Knowing that I was making myself a part of a meaningful moment in my colleagues’ lives, and the historic change of each crisis, was a captivating cycle. However there was always a nagging feeling in this fear and delusional superiority cycle that I was missing a big piece of the picture. My friends were socking away regular savings towards retirement, participating in long term wealth building while I was paralyzed by fear of this issue. I translated this fear into disdain and inaction.  Making mistakes in the Social Sector world, recovering and moving on. Killing the fear of failure
There is a failure fetish in the Silicon Valley startup culture where new companies want to “fail fast”. This means trying an experiment, testing to see if the idea can work, and then moving on to something else in a “pivot” if the idea doesn't work. In contrast, we fear failure in the Social Sectors. My chosen Social Sector field of international humanitarian assistance has put me on the cutting edge of trying to provide help to people hit by natural disasters or recovering from civil war. As Social Sector professionals we are out in the real life doing the hard work, just as when a startup company tries to begin operations. We live and work in a similar type of “fail fast” Silicon Valley environment where the approach becomes establishing an idea, testing it, and making adjustments based on the outcome. However, this is where the parallel breaks down.  Down time is a scarce commodity in my life right now, although it was not always that way. I can look back into the memory bank and pull out days, weeks, months and years of down time that have come my way. This was time as a homeschooler in Virginia with endless, open, unstructured days. Down time was weekend camping trips with the Boy Scouts as a teen. Open days in East Africa waiting for the work permit on my first job to come through after college. Reading, traveling slowly by bus, and wandering the new city of Nairobi. Many of the down times were valuable in learning, experiencing, and simply being in that moment, at that time, in that place.
 This post is about decision making in complex scenarios: How to have a strong mind and make the right choice in a crisis. How to manage your own emotions to best help others in a crisis.
On August 12, 2017 a car plowed into a group of peaceful protesters in my hometown of Charlottesville, Virginia. The attack that killed one and wounded 20 followed a tense morning of exchanges between so called ‘Alt Right’ groups and a large group of counter protesters. Just after the one year anniversary of the event, I’ve assembled some thoughts on crisis management that I started writing just after last year’s event.  Core habits drive our behavior. Core habits get wrapped around our principles and activities to make us who we are, and form how we act/react in any situation. In a recent post about how positive habits can replace traditional training for social sector workers, I discussed the concept of habits, and how they can help us transform our work and life.
But what are the best habits to form and maintain? On a recent work trip to Niamey, Niger in Africa’s Sahel region I had the privilege of spending time with social sector professionals from the Niger national government, United Nations, and non governmental organizations. These groups are working to reduce poverty and save lives by helping people survive and overcome disease, poverty, and natural disasters. The professionals in these organizations are dedicated people who have oriented their lives and their careers toward the Sustainable Development Goals, and the Humanitarian Principles. They are working in an austere environment with security concerns, short of human resources, and with never enough funding for their organizations to fully respond to these challenges. The temperature outside is hot year round. Malaria is common and the food options are basic and monotonous. This is a recipe for stress and burnout for the social sector workers in that environment.  Do you have a second? What is the true value of time? Time is your only non-renewable and finite resource. Assets, learning, space, you can always regain. Once time gone, there is no way to get it back.
In recent years as my life has become more full with a growing family and career , time has become an increasingly scarce resource. This has created a scarcity mindset around days, hours, and minutes that has put me into a reactive state and left me with a feeling that there was never enough time. It seemed like there was never enough time to work on and achieve my Social Sector mission. Never enough time to do the things I want to experience outside of work. This was pressure that I put on myself and it created physical and mental pain for me and a feeling of scarcity that leaked into my mindset and actions toward myself and others. |
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