As software developers it’s second nature for us to worry about what could go wrong. We live with the fear of the Ariane 5 failure or the Mars Climate Orbiter disaster in the back of our minds. Don’t use the wrong units. Don’t use null pointers. Don’t overflow your numeric values. Don’t divide by zero. Don’t write insecure code. And dozens of other worries. But this habit will undermine our ability to learn.
Our minds are unable to picture a negative. If I tell you, “Don’t think about the blue elephant”, it’s impossible! The only thing we can do is think about a blue elephant. Our minds just go there. So if we focus mainly on what NOT to do, we’ll find ourselves doing that very thing!
Instead, we need to focus on the positive action or outcome we want to achieve: Make sure the units are consistent. Make sure the variables are initialized. Make sure we follow the proper security guidelines.
It may feel awkward at first to always put a positive spin on what we are doing, but it will make our learning so much better. Instead of, “Don’t make mistakes”, we say, “Let’s consistently get it right”. Instead of, “Don’t try to read too big of a section of code”, we say, “Let’s focus on smaller groups of code in chunks”. Instead of “Don’t choose a bad name”, we say, “Let’s choose a good name now, and if we come up with something better later, we can always change it!” Instead of, “Don’t check in commented-out code”, we say, “I will positively pummel the next guy I see checking in commented-out-code!” … oops! Maybe not!
Ok, maybe I still need some work on this…
What are some negative phrases you catch yourself using? How can you reframe them to be positive?