#30😱 Core PM Skills - The Practice of Failure (Part 2)
Strategies in practicing failure to find your next job.
Welcome to Tech Atypically 👋, your weekly blog that explores the intersection of ADHD, product management, and the complexities of a neurodiverse life. In each issue, I dive into the science, stories, and strategies that can help you navigate the challenges of ADHD and being a product manager.
Part 5 of the Book of ADHD Product Management awaits you in this edition.
🌋Takeaways
My fear of failure is mostly fueled by the coupling of ADHD anxiety and rumination.
Anxiety and rumination may make the negative voices louder, but they don’t make them anymore true.
Knowing when to quit is just as important as knowing what success looks like.
🐼Connect with me for free ADHD help
Takeaways
My fear of failure is mostly fueled by the coupling of ADHD anxiety and rumination.
Anxiety and rumination may make the negative voices louder, but they don’t make them anymore true.
Knowing when to quit is just as important as knowing what success looks like.
A quick note about today’s issue
I’ve split this topic into 2 parts as test to see if readers respond to to it better. I am trying to deliver the same type of content in a quicker-read format with more real-life examples. There’s a poll at the bottom where you can give feedback on the format.
Note: I had a total failure today by publishing this story accidently to only paid subscribers. I had to republish it to make sure it went out to everyone.
⭐Introduction
Welcome to part 2 of the the failure of practice. Last week, I set the stage with stories that demonstrate how failure is integral to life and job hunting. In this week’s edition I discuss the science and strategies of practicing failure. My goal for you is to spend less energy avoiding the possibility of failure (aka anxiety) and to embrace it as a daily practice. By doing so, you can better cope with the negative feelings of ADHD when experiencing failure in life or products you manage.
🦄Science - ADHD anxiety and rumination
My fear of failure is mostly fueled by the coupling of ADHD anxiety and rumination. Anxiety is the mental and physiological response to a perceived risk or threat. It is also one of the most comorbidities with ADHD (source). Rumination is the repeated mental dwelling on past or future events (source). It’s the thing that keeps you coming back to the worst memories or experiences over and over. The two like to keep me up at night or paralyze my decision making during the day.
When I think about doing something new, my first thoughts are usually to how it could go wrong. It could be something small like writing a feature request or something big like product strategy. When I think about finding a job, I immediately think about how I may crash and burn during a case study interview or how I might get laid off again. It’s not a helpful spend of emotional effort.
While these negative thoughts are normal for someone neurotypical, my ADHD brain amplifies their voices to a loudness only a hyperactive brain could create. The voices can paralyze my decision making and hold a me a in place of procrastination and avoidance. They become the only voice I hear.
Anxiety and rumination may make the negative voices louder, but they don’t make them anymore true. Our anxiety thoughts are often just noise. What they say may come true but. However, you also have to recognize something else entirely could happen. It could work out, or better. Recognizing it’s noise, and it’s your noise, not reality, is the first step in breaking out of the cycle and back into a state of choice and power.
🔥Strategies to practice failure
Differentiate between feeling disappointment and thinking you are a disappointment.
Getting a job rejection often comes with the feelings of disappointment. You might have really wanted that job. Mourn the loss of that opportunity and celebrate what you learned during the process. Those feelings don’t make you you disappointment though. Job interviews are not a measure of your self-worth. They’re a speed dating game where sometimes you win, they win, everyone wins, or no one wins at all. You continue forward no matter the outcome. You are not disappointment.
Share your failures and self-doubt to diminish the power of anxiety.
The more you keep in your anxiety and rumination inside, the more power you give them. The feelings can become your prison and no one else may even know about them. Sharing your thoughts with others, breaks their hold and cycle.
For me, it’s integral to have engineering and design partners I can openly share ideas and failures with. They remind me that my failures aren’t as bad as I feel and how to move forward even when the failure is that bad.
Weight success and failure criteria success equally.
Knowing when to quit is just as important as knowing what success looks like. Negative outcomes are answers to a question. Answers are not measures if your abilities or self-worth.
Have “eject button” criteria in your strategies. Your strategies should include a section with criteria in the case of certain events happen, this strategy should be reassess or no longer valid. This keep the team aligned with expectations and you from spinning into a personal failure mindset when things go wrong. Quitting sometimes is the best decision.
This is different from a risk section that might talk about the cost of not doing something which typically supports your idea.
Practice pre-mortems.
Reframe your ability to think about all the ways things go wrong as a superpower in your plan.
I first learned about this practice from TheSageMages. Imagine everything has gone wrong and put it all on paper. Turn your self-doubt, anxiety, and worse case fears into a practice that helps yourself and team plan for success.
✨Conclusion
I’ll always have some sort of fear of failure. Sometimes it’ll be small enough I’ll ignore it. Other times at may be so big I’ll run and hide. The most important thing is I remain in a state of choice. A state in which I am making the decisions that I want. That I don’t let the voices of my anxiety and rumination stop me exploring my next question. Or making me believe in things that deep down inside I know aren’t true. My next failure is around the corner but so is my next success. I choose try again.
To all my other unemployed colleagues out there, remember each rejected application is one step closer to your next job.
🐼Need a nudge toward your dreams?
⏭️Next Week
The Stories and Strategies of the Practice of Failure in product management and ADHD.