One of the most valuable things I have done, for myself, is to let as much of my personal life bleed into my work behaviors as I can, as you define them.
This could have backfired spectacularly. In some work cultures probably it would always backfire.
In mine, I:
make 98%+ of my writing viewable to everyone at the company, and we’re remote, so almost everything of importance makes it into writing
never “try” to display an air of competency—trying to display an air of competency is one of the core behaviors that caused terrible feedback loops and major depression early in my career, now I take joy every time I can display to everyone where I am not competent. In some sense this is signaling extreme competency because who would do that unless they were very comfortable in their position. See also “backfire”. But also this can lead to much more rapid professional competency growth, because other people love to teach you things.
tell jokes, embarrass myself a little, feel okay being silly or weird, literally treat it as a red flag about a person if I feel I need to walk on eggshells around them and bring it up with my manager even if I can’t point to exactly why
push for exploratory “something seems interesting here but IDK what and no I can’t tell you its value” work in general, and in specific do some of it myself whenever the mood strikes and nothing urgent is otherwise going on
Wow the opposite of what I was thinking. You are steps ahead of me if you have actually implemented changes. What is your experience with the change so far? If you don’t mind, has it effected the measurables I wanted to investigate?
-am I able to move from work to non work tasks easily
-do I feel a need to talk about work
hopefully I should feel some sense of being more myself although this is vague
My life is similar to @GuySrinivasan’s description of his. I’m on the autism spectrum, and I found that faking it (masking) negatively impacted my relationships.
Interestingly I found that taking steps to prevent overimitation (by which I mean, presenting myself not as an expert, but as someone who is always looking for corrections whenever I make a mistake) makes me people much more willing to truly learn from me, and simultaneously, much more willing to challenge me for understanding when what I say doesn’t make a lot of sense to them… this serves the duel role of giving them an opportunity correct my mistakes (a benefit to me) and giving them an opportunity to call out when my presentation style does not work for them (another benefit to me.)
My approach has the added benefit of giving people permission to correct me socially, not just professionally, which makes my eccentricities seemingly more tolerable to the average coworker. (i.e., People seem to be more willing to tolerate my odd behaviors when they know that they can talk to me about it, if it really bothers them.)
My relationships with people outside of work depends entirely on what’s going on with that relationship. I tend to avoid complaining about social issues at work to anyone except my wife, and few people can really appreciate the nuance of the job that I do unless they’re in the same job, so I don’t feel much compulsion to talk about my work. (If someone asks what I do, I generalize that I help people figure out how to do their jobs better. Although my work space is not in self-help or coaching, but actually in a technical space… but that’s largely irrelevant beyond it being a label for my industry.)
I also tend to have narrow range of interests, which influences the range of topics for non-work relationships.
I do my best to minimize switches from work to non-work “modes”. When I am done with work for the day, I usually give myself a half hour to chill before switching to non-work.
I do not feel a need to talk about work. But some work anecdotes are still good for personal life, of course, and I do not censor them.
I actually feel… more intensely not like myself now, at work, than I used to, in some sense, because back in the major depression days I tried to feel as little as possible. Now I notice a lot more often when I’m doing things that “aren’t me”. So like previously I was closer to Gordon’s mask description (in fact I described my fake-self as my “shell”) and there was no active tension between shell-actions and identity, just passive drain from using the shell. Whereas now it feels a lot more like “I am always me, but compromise that in certain ways at work”.
One of the most valuable things I have done, for myself, is to let as much of my personal life bleed into my work behaviors as I can, as you define them.
This could have backfired spectacularly. In some work cultures probably it would always backfire.
In mine, I:
make 98%+ of my writing viewable to everyone at the company, and we’re remote, so almost everything of importance makes it into writing
never “try” to display an air of competency—trying to display an air of competency is one of the core behaviors that caused terrible feedback loops and major depression early in my career, now I take joy every time I can display to everyone where I am not competent. In some sense this is signaling extreme competency because who would do that unless they were very comfortable in their position. See also “backfire”. But also this can lead to much more rapid professional competency growth, because other people love to teach you things.
tell jokes, embarrass myself a little, feel okay being silly or weird, literally treat it as a red flag about a person if I feel I need to walk on eggshells around them and bring it up with my manager even if I can’t point to exactly why
push for exploratory “something seems interesting here but IDK what and no I can’t tell you its value” work in general, and in specific do some of it myself whenever the mood strikes and nothing urgent is otherwise going on
Wow the opposite of what I was thinking. You are steps ahead of me if you have actually implemented changes. What is your experience with the change so far? If you don’t mind, has it effected the measurables I wanted to investigate?
-am I able to move from work to non work tasks easily -do I feel a need to talk about work
hopefully I should feel some sense of being more myself although this is vague
My life is similar to @GuySrinivasan’s description of his. I’m on the autism spectrum, and I found that faking it (masking) negatively impacted my relationships.
Interestingly I found that taking steps to prevent overimitation (by which I mean, presenting myself not as an expert, but as someone who is always looking for corrections whenever I make a mistake) makes me people much more willing to truly learn from me, and simultaneously, much more willing to challenge me for understanding when what I say doesn’t make a lot of sense to them… this serves the duel role of giving them an opportunity correct my mistakes (a benefit to me) and giving them an opportunity to call out when my presentation style does not work for them (another benefit to me.)
My approach has the added benefit of giving people permission to correct me socially, not just professionally, which makes my eccentricities seemingly more tolerable to the average coworker. (i.e., People seem to be more willing to tolerate my odd behaviors when they know that they can talk to me about it, if it really bothers them.)
My relationships with people outside of work depends entirely on what’s going on with that relationship. I tend to avoid complaining about social issues at work to anyone except my wife, and few people can really appreciate the nuance of the job that I do unless they’re in the same job, so I don’t feel much compulsion to talk about my work. (If someone asks what I do, I generalize that I help people figure out how to do their jobs better. Although my work space is not in self-help or coaching, but actually in a technical space… but that’s largely irrelevant beyond it being a label for my industry.)
I also tend to have narrow range of interests, which influences the range of topics for non-work relationships.
I do my best to minimize switches from work to non-work “modes”. When I am done with work for the day, I usually give myself a half hour to chill before switching to non-work.
I do not feel a need to talk about work. But some work anecdotes are still good for personal life, of course, and I do not censor them.
I actually feel… more intensely not like myself now, at work, than I used to, in some sense, because back in the major depression days I tried to feel as little as possible. Now I notice a lot more often when I’m doing things that “aren’t me”. So like previously I was closer to Gordon’s mask description (in fact I described my fake-self as my “shell”) and there was no active tension between shell-actions and identity, just passive drain from using the shell. Whereas now it feels a lot more like “I am always me, but compromise that in certain ways at work”.