Train ride
26/10/2006
Spent two days stuck in a windowless conference room, as someone stylishly put it. Learning how to do this and that, and how to work things out. Uneventful, but pretty useful.
Before I went into the sessions I was expecting a bunch of management hogwash and I psyched myself to remember that I know what works for me better that some two-bit trainer-scum. Thankfully it wasn’t a blind brainwashing session, and some of the techniques and frameworks were really useful.
It was also quite interesting when everyone had to say something about what they learnt about the lesson at the end of the course. A common theme was that they had a vague idea of how to deal with things but the sessions either validated what they thought was a good course of action. Some said it indicated where they did something wrong.
My guess everyone has pretty good instincts. It’s just a matter of getting the time to think it through carefully and perspective also helps.
The more I look at things the more I’m convinced IQ gets you your first job, and maybe establishes you as competent (or not). Most of the time your career starts to depend more and more on EQ after the junior level.
Because like it or not, when you deal less with work and more with people – bosses, peers, colleagues, and others in the organisation – the job becomes more about handling them than handling code. I’ve seen people climb the corporate ladder on close to 0 IQ but just with EQ. So how’s that for powerful?
Anyway. Things change, but shit seldom does. It’s usually the same things, different angles. How you deal with it, depends on how large your EQ palette is I guess, and the outcome you’re hoping to achieve. That’s what’s fun about life. Free will and variety.
The Marshmallow Man, Daniel Goleman
The newest thing I heard today was the theory of deferred gratification. So far it’s kind of a wild take for me, that deferring gratification (ie strong impulse control) will lead to success is far out even by my standards. Searching for it returned whimsical, practical, nurturing and spiritual arguments that sprung up around the tenet of the experiment. I love trivia, so perhaps I’ll try it on the kids this weekend.
