I used to get feedback that I’m “distracted” because of the strange way I solve problems. No one thinks like me, understands me, or can guide me through my own brain. That’s on me. But others can provide me tools and information along the way. At my job, managers often tell me “You are doing too many things” when I come into a 1-on-1 feeling defeated.
Read: Tay Nishimura from Datadog on How She Built the
Confidence to Transition into Infrastructure Engineering
It seems subtle, but there was a significant difference for me between “distracted” and “doing too many things”. The first was a cryptic judgement that I should actually be doing something else, and the latter was a precise description of what I experienced in my brain. Feedback like this has helped me delegate tasks back into my team when I’ve taken on too much, so I can get back to my most productive flow.
This way, I line up a single success within a series of small achievements in order to boost my confidence… because another feedback I received here is to work on my confidence. Most of us benefit from someone helping us prune bad branches or discover new paths. Good things take a lot of patience and love… from ourselves and from the community. š I talk about confidence and mentorship more in this interview.
Tay Nishimura 