Defeatism

Defeatism: The acceptance of defeat without struggle, often with negative connotations.

In high school, I would often skip homework assignments. I had excellent test-taking skills and liked to think that it wasn’t worth the effort. Honestly, it was hard to simply sit down and do the work. So I wouldn’t. I would skate by with middling to poor grades because I didn’t want to take the time. That’s okay, though, because I wasn’t really trying.

In college, I found that skating by on test scores simply wouldn’t work. To compound things, I had anxiety problems with the massive groups that had to gather for Calculus courses. I started to realize I was slipping behind and would stop going to a course. After a bit of time, I stopped going altogether. I ended up failing out of college. That’s okay, though, because I wasn’t really trying.

My first real job was helping to create large back-end services that help with medical claim pricing. This company had some particularly ugly practices, both technically and with personnel. I had ideas on how to improve things and would occasionally ask questions and give opinions on how to proceed. This would usually fall on deaf ears, either because they had no idea of the benefits or that I wasn’t explaining it properly. That’s okay, though, because I wasn’t really trying.

A common theme in my life is that I will hold back, that I will float something half-hearted with the hope of success but the assumption of failure. It’s a defense mechanism of sorts: if it succeeds, then I’m validated. If it fails, well, I wasn’t really trying. It’s coasting through life without ever putting conviction behind something, without ever putting yourself out there to be hurt. No one will ever point at you and say, “This was your idea, and it was a bad one.”

About three years ago, I moved to a new job where I had to define my own development practices. There wasn’t really anything set up. There was no “This is our process. No exceptions.” to hide behind. I made a conscious effort to stop making excuses, to try to do my best. I’ve definitely lapsed on occasion, but I’ve stopped letting the phrase “I wasn’t really trying” be a shield to hide behind.

All in all, I’d say it’s worked. I’ve grown leaps and bounds over where I was at my first job. I’ve started to push back on “that’s just the way it’s always been”. I think the team I’m on is doing great work and I see milestone improvements every week or so. Mostly, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how few times I’ve failed or been called out for “trying too hard”. My fears were mostly unfounded.

That said, I do miss my defeatist defense every now and then. I recently applied for a job that is, honestly, above my technical level. I wanted to grow, so I applied to the top of where I’d like to be. Surrounded by people who work in the way I’d like to work on a daily basis. Questioning, creating, tutoring, consulting. If the fastest way to grow is surrounding yourself with smart, experienced people, I would grow like a weed.

I applied. My latest interview was in Ruby, my most comfortable language. And I bombed. The details aren’t really that important. Suffice it to say there were problems with almost everything, from my approach, to my knowledge of libraries, to random issues with my PC’s setup. It was bad. I’m not expecting a call from them.

Here’s the thing: It hurt. It hurt more than I expected, and in a way that wasn’t easy to explain away. I had tried my hardest and came up short.

And yet, even that faded faster than I thought it would. An hour or so of dreading perhaps. I was left with a clear list of things to work on, a project that had gone bad but that I could iterate on in my own time to find the solution I would’ve wanted to work on.

I still cringe thinking about the interview, but I don’t really lament it. This is my clearest example in three years of trying hard and failing. If I hadn’t tried, I wouldn’t have found these gaps in my knowledge, these personality traits to improve on, or a humorous failure story.

I’m still processing what happened, but one thing keeps coming through in a way I hadn’t quite expected. I’m honestly happier that I tried than hid and laughed from the sidelines.

At least I tried. And, no doubt, I’ll try again.