Sounds like great advice when working on the bleeding edge, but kinda terrible for general use. If you are constantly undermining your own self confidence in routine tasks be prepared for a depressive episode.
> If you are constantly undermining your own self confidence in routine tasks be prepared for a depressive episode.
I disagree that self-skepticism implies undermining your own self confidence. With regular practice, it should bolster your confidence in your ability to find mistakes (a valuable skill), and in your ability to produce final outputs with fewer errors.
I guess it's in how you phrase the skepticism: are you skeptical of your ability to do the work, or are you skeptical that your work is free of mistakes? There is a difference.
I agree with your take and I'll support it with different phrasing.
Skepticism and practice resolving it helps you develop a validation framework you can stand on. Is this right or wrong? How right or wrong? How valid or invalid? Over time, you train yourself on that framework.
I'm an actuary by training but currently in a SaaS sales role. The nuance is some roles have lots of opportunities for validation while others are much more qualitative. As an actuary, there's lots of math that you check as either right or wrong, and other math that you validate as accurate (not right or wrong) with some list of assumptions and caveats for error/noise.
I see a lot LESS skepticism in sales peers. People that don't want to buy must not get it, or they're not the right customer, or any number of reasons. A revaluation of the pitch, the approach, the discovery of the problem is much less present. Moreover, what is right/wrong or valid/invalid?
I'm fascinated by how it all works in sales (and in math) but the contrast of my experiences tells me you've never hurting your case by looking for validation, by naturally applying some doubt and trying to make the case for outcome.
To me, skepticism is an orientation towards not believing something. Kind of a posture or position. This, to me, is what seems like a bad way to go about life.
Maybe a better way to frame this is that someone should be honest with themselves. Be aware of their fallibility and use that awareness to inform decision making.
There is definitely a dark side to being overly skeptical by default. It can harm or hinder relationships, unnecessarily reinforce existing patterns/beliefs and deepen blind spots, and I think a failure mode involves obsessive compulsive tendencies + anxiety about the quality of one's work.
I've been on the "clinically unhealthy" side of this mindset, and it's ultimately about balance and framing. The same can be said for optimism, which can become just as dysfunctional if not balanced with a healthy dose of reality.
Agreed. "The goal is to get to the truth, the goal is not about winning arguments."
Being confident in being able to unravel truths, being able to improve but skeptical of current self because of potential ingrained biases and potential cognitive faillability.
Even in day to day programming, it's too easy to throw something together and see it work and call it a day. A dose of scepticism toward a "solution" is healthy. It's not like software doesn't come with bugs grossly often. Probably grounds for extra self confidence even.
Critique the work of others as well. A lot of impostor syndrome goes away when you realize that 80% of the people who you thing are better than you are cutting corners you won’t, and that takes up time. Someone else is cleaning up after them.
I think that would depend on whether you view your work as producing "argument proof results" or just "results." In other words, producing high volume low-quality "trash" may easily undermine self confidence more than producing low-volume high-quality "diamonds."
In either case, the way you frame it matters much more than the process. But I can agree that expecting either "high quality high volume" or aiming for "low quality low volume" are both likely paths to a depressive episode.
Personally, I'd rather small flawed diamonds. The fact that they are diamonds nonetheless gives me pride. The fact that I can produce greater quantities of them than flawless gems keeps me employed (which also gives me self-confidence).
