I hate fights. And arguments. Hey, even discussions sometimes I find uncomfortable or at least boring.
Note that I try not to be a coward. I stand up for my beliefs and thoughts. But I don’t like to fight about them, that seems very common today. If you wanna pick a fight, just tweet any opinion under the #NoEstimates tag and you see what I don’t wanna.
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| From XKCD |
From time to time I’ve withdrawn from blogging and social media. Just to get away. That might be cowardly, but I didn’t see the use continuing fighting about how to approach estimation, what JavaScript data access library is better etc. The world need you and me better elsewhere.
I’ve stopped being the guy at the computer in the cartoon to the right. But I’m still expressing my views.
In this blog post I’ll share how. I’ve found a way to express my views without being a coward and in a way that will not, as easy, create arguments and fighting but rather discussions and learning. And peace in my soul. A good friend of mine, Mats Wiberg, said something smart to me once:
Nobody can take away your experience from you
So when I blog, talk or tweet I try to give my perspective and experience rather than criticising others. Often ends up being a much more positive tone in the text.
Once my text is done, I run through it and see if there’s any “me”, “mine” or “I” that I can replace with “we”, “ours” or “us”. Can I include others that helped me realise the thing I wrote about, or how was part in the success. It feels so much nicer sharing an recognition with others. (HA - even in this text I have done exactly this a number of times already… It works!)
On that same thought - I try to remove “you”, “yours” and “they”, “theirs” unless I’m showing of things that they have done great.
I try to talk about what’s good (and bad) with my suggestion, rather than what is bad about other alternative. Most people that read my text will learn more from this and probably make conclusions for themselves that is much better than mine. If I write all the conclusions for them you are limiting and diminishing the creativity of your readers.
Welcome and meet all commenters, how ever angry they seem. I always start my responses with “Thank you for reading and taking the time to comment” or something like that. I always try to answer all comments. No matter the tone I try to be very polite back. Your readers actually took time from their day to comment on your writing. That’s worth the same respect back.
These simple things, I’ve found, turns the discussions afterwards away from the screaming and kicking and towards a more fruitful and rewarding discussion of the subject.
And yes, I forget about these things. Often. Please remind me.