Listen to your inner voice
Photo by Keegan Houser on Unsplash
One of my passions outside technology is learning about behavioural sciences. One of the areas of reading is the conscious and subconscious mind. In the book Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman (link). It talks in detail about the purpose of our System 1 and System 2 which almost translates to our conscious and subconscious mind. Our system 1 is more automatic, fast and impulsive. Our system 2 is more logical, slow and calculating. We all have our more dominant systems and being more self-aware of them and which one you are leaning on at a particular time is helpful. In this article, I only wanted to write about our system 2, the subconscious, the inner voice.
Unlike our conscious mind, our subconscious is taking in hundreds of inputs at any given time. It takes time to process and leverages historical data then offers the information up to your conscious mind. It can detect changes, danger and opportunity and bring your attention to it. It offers the information to our conscious mind to do something with the information. We often ignore the information and continue with what we are doing. Training yourself to listen to your inner voice will increase your awareness and your EQ. Some examples of inner voice trying to talk to you are.
Feeling the person, you are talking to is being disingenuous.
Feeling that the person you are talking to is a little different today. It could be their tone, conversational style or body language.
Feeling that you forgot something only to realise you forgot your headphones when you get to the gym.
So how does this all translate into something that can help your career? For me, my inner voice has developed short mantras for particular situations. The mantras keep me from saying something I shouldn’t or not saying something I should. They improve my focus by identifying distractions earlier. They make me ask one extra question instead of reacting with a response.
Below are five that I have come attuned to over the years that work for me.
One. Don’t over think it. My natural tendencies are towards perfectionism. At the beginning of my career is more of a perfectionist served me well. It pushed me to spend time researching to understand things to ensure I was producing high-quality work. Later in my career, the speed of striving for perfectionism became more of a hindrance. Having a great coach and observing other people’s performance helped me adopt the 80/20 rule where it was required. I am sure many reading this would attest to this being difficult. Stopping a task at 80% and hitting send is very unnatural for a perfectionist. You want it to be complete. You know you can do more. You know you can do better. What helps me now is my inner voice reminding me Don’t over think it. It is enough of a trigger for me to wrap up what I am working on and hitting send. There are so many times where 80% of a task brings the most value and this pushes me to work within this framework.
Two. Shut it down. In any given week my role revolves around meetings and group discussions. In most cases, they are straight forward and productive. On occasion, I end up in a meeting that one might label as escalating or an escalation. These are the meetings that are high in emotion and people's comments are less measured. We all have our triggers and these are the situations where people are setting off each other's triggers. My goal is to ensure I can keep calm and not get drawn into the commotion. I still need to focus on what is being said and the direction things are meant to be heading. I start feeling my emotions increase and itch to retort or defend a comment. More often than not this is not the right move for this moment. So, my inner voice will creep in Shut it down. My subconscious has taken in the situation in detail. It reminds me very little is going to be solved in this room today. So, don't get drawn in. Instead, focus on winding the meeting up and find another avenue to continue the discussion.
Three. Get over it. It is done. There are so many reasons to ruminate over something that has not gone your way. (See my other article about learning through failure - link). I find it hard to perform if my mind is occupied playing a story over and over in my head. All the different version of events. What could of or should have transpired, what should I have said or done? To get myself to start focusing on looking forward and the next steps should be. My inner voice will remind me Get over it. It is done. So simple yet effective for me. It pushes me to stop avoiding what needs to happen next and get on with it.
Four. Don’t be lazy. There are sometimes where the easier path is far easier than the path you know you want to take. Whether it is where you want to defend a comment that you didn't think was factual by another team. Or that time when you do not want to put the last 20% in but there is a good reason to do so. My inner voice will push Don't be lazy. It is what pushes me to ask that one question in the 1:1 that I know I prefer to avoid. It gets me double check my facts before replying to a thread. It gets me to the gym when I don't want to go. The goal is to minimise the things I am avoiding from laziness. Those things are usually the ones that bring the best conversations or the best results.
Five You don't need to win this. It may not come as a surprise to my team. I can be a little competitive. The shadow of this attribute is that you don't consciously choose what is important to win. What needs to be considered is the time and energy spent is equal to or greater than the results gained. This could be as simple as my iPhone is better than your Android. Or as complex as pushing one idea over another. One of the triggers for my inner voice is when there is repetition in the discussion. If I find myself in a loop trying different ways to articulate the message. Only to find myself trying to find yet another way to articulate it. By the third cycle, my inner voice will remind me You don't need to win this. There is no point staying in a discussion for your ego. So, to steer me out of areas where the effort required is not worth the reward. My inner voice acts as my voice of reason. It has computed the possible outcomes and it is indicating the value is low. So, I slowly exit the discussion and move on with my day.
Listening to voices in your head might sound a little weird. This is less having a conversation with your inner voice and more of a feeling you get or an itch at the back of your mind. Pausing for a moment to listen and process the information that is knocking on your door is all that you need to do.
Start getting in tune with your inner voice
Note: Opinions expressed are solely my own and do not express the views or opinions of my employer.