20 Goals for 2019

I know the year is already half over, but here are my goals for 2019 (this was not finished earlier as my goals kept changing). 

Social Goals

1. Be observant (of other humans)

Stop thinking about myself and observe what others are feeling.

2. Overlook rudeness, and reframe as much as possible.

I learned this from an interview with Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  I've noticed that I tend to misinterpret situations more than 50% of the time. I need to remind myself that, more often than not, people don’t mean to hurt me.  As a clueless engineer working among possibly even more clueless engineers, I should realize I'm bumping up against low EQ (emotional intelligence) rather than malicious intent.

3. Control my anger

Or channel the anger in a skilled way. Try centering myself in the midst of an anger inducing situation, and channeling the anger into making a “boundary” and focussing it in my responses.

4. Get rejected at least once a week 

Rejection is my biggest fear! Hopefully exposing myself to more of it will help me be less fearful of it.

5. Be vulnerable

As I've grown older, I've become more and more private, saving my innermost thoughts only for those close to me. In order to make connections, I need to be more vulnerable, but not in a socially unacceptable way that prematurely forces intimacy, or when the person doesn’t deserve it.

6. Don't be a bully

I get really impatient with people I perceive to be stupid. Or to be absolutely correct, I get really impatient with people who are deluded about their ignorance or lack of skills (see my post about how to handle people like this). I should not discriminate against people on the basis of their ignorance or incompetence, just like I shouldn't discriminate on the basis of gender or sex. I'm only being slightly facetious, here. Stupid is not something one chooses to be.

Physical Goals

7. Take a gym class 3X/week (or spend 60 minutes at the gym).

8. Walk a minimum of 7000 steps on the days that I don’t take a gym class, or do cardio in the gym for 30 minutes instead. 

9. Strengthen my back and core muscles with yoga, pilates, weights and barre.

10. Self-care: Take more steam baths and take better care of my skin.

11. Eat more vegetables and fruit.

12. Minimize the times I eat until I am past full.

Career Goals

13. Try something new at work. Ask my boss if I can represent the company at a conference. Interface with the customer more.
14. Read (or listen to) management, social skills, and communication books to improve my career.
15. Be more curious about the people I work with. Ask them about their day or something personal.
16. Continue to take big design risks. It seems like every time I do something bold, like contributing a design without being asked, it pays off (such as receiving a patent).
17. Dig deeper. Scrape below the surface with my analysis and with my line of questioning.

Fun Goals

18. Have more IRL fun. Don’t be a hermit all the time. Even though I live a rich internal life through books, movies and video games, sometimes I need to remind myself that real life is more piquant. If consuming video games is like candy, hanging out with my friends/family is like a healthy, nourishing meal.
19. Frame more pictures and paintings. Since being denied an office in my new work building, I’ve been obsessed with decorating my cubicle so that I don’t feel so deprived. I’ve decorated my cube with accessories from Ikea and West Elm, and there are now several plants enjoying my primo real estate under the skylight (so bright, I almost need to wear sunscreen every day). Now, I don’t wish for any of the offices (they look like jail cells), and I feel like I’m at the spa every time I work at my desk. I’ve even gotten several compliments on how nice my cube looks, although I think the natural lighting does most of the heavy lifting.
20. Organize a trip with family and/or friends: Thanksgiving in Hawaii? Christmas in Europe? Roadtrip to Disneyland?

2018 Year in Review

2018 was year 2 of the “Resistance”. Although the country’s reputation has fallen in regard globally, and although much of the rest of the country will probably suffer due to the current president’s policies, we in California have largely been unaffected. I have done my part fighting for political causes that I believe in and fighting the current administration. I have donated to the ACLU this past year, as well as Planned Parenthood, and the Democratic Redistricting Committee (the group that works to reverse gerrymandering in Republicans' favor). Following the Kavanaugh hearings, I also gave money to several Democratic senators whose performances during the hearings I admired, as well as donating money to whichever candidate will eventually run against Maine Senator Susan Collins. During the midterms, I gave money to several promising candidates, including Stacy Abrams, who ran for governor in Georgia, but unfortunately lost. Whether she lost fairly or not, is unclear. The candidate she ran against was also the official overseeing the election - which is a huge conflict of interest. And also there were patently obvious attempts to restrict the vote in that state. (By the way, I am veering off from my former stance to stay away from politics  because I think we are at an exceptionally bad moment in history, that I think that I stand on the right side of history, and for me not to have a firm, public stance would be cowardly and unprincipled.)

Work-wise, it was a bit tough this year, but extremely rewarding in terms of the things that I was able to accomplish. On the negative side, I broke down a couple of times. The first time, I got responsibility taken away from me. That didn’t offend me. I think my manager decided to unload me because I truly was overwhelmed, and he and I realized I didn’t do well in customer-facing roles. At any rate, I was OK with having responsibilities off-loaded from me, because that allowed me to focus on one of the most challenging work assignments I’ve ever had. That assignment was unique in having tight size constraints, but huge strength requirements. I literally lost blood, sweat and tears designing this thing. Every time I tested a new round of prototypes, my nerves were wracked. If my test results were poor, it could ruin my day and leave me in a death spiral of ruminative thinking. But in retrospect, the fear that I felt was not due to a loss of faith in my own ability (I knew that I would eventually succeed), but because I feared I would take longer than expected and lose my managers’ faith in me. The fact that I eventually succeeded makes this a definite feel-good story to refer back to the next time I feel fear of failure, which is inevitable in this line if work. 

A couple of other standout moments in a largely uneventful year: (1) we vacationed in French Polynesia, where we did some scuba diving in Rangiroa, and had a great experience, even though we didn’t stay in an overwater bungalow. I will have some vacation video to post shortly.

(2) I also bought a Tesla Model 3, and counter to what I thought would happen, I actually love the car. Having only driven it a short time, I think I love the car even more than I loved my Mini Cooper convertible. I even named the car, “Toothless” after the dragon in "How to Train Your Dragon". if you compare the two, you can definitely see the resemblance. Also, they are both very cute, yet powerful.

Black Tesla Model 3

Toothless the Dragon

I hope that things will be as good and as uneventful in the year to come as 2018 was. Of course, me being me, I have a lengthy list of things I want to achieve and work on. It’s too lengthy to detail here, but generally, I want to work on not sweating the small stuff, particularly when it comes to my coworkers, even when they are trying my last nerve. And also, I want to work on being more vulnerable, but only around people who’ve earned my trust.

The Dunning-Kruger Effect

I had a rare dinner night out with a couple of girlfriends. Per usual, we turned the date into a chance to get away from our husbands, and (excluding myself) our children, and to eat the type of food we are usually not allowed to eat. This night, we chose to dine at a Korean BBQ restaurant because our husbands don’t like Korean food. And so, as Kalbi ribs sizzled before our table top grill we turned the night into a vent session, per usual. 

All three of us are well-educated, and competent in our fields. All of us are Asian females working in heavily masculine fields in the Silicon Valley, and to be honest, some of us are not appreciated or respected to the extent that we should be.  

One of my friends is a software engineer. She is known for being a pinch hitter, taking on tasks that others fail to complete after being given weeks or even months. She is then given 24 hours to complete the task, and she will begrudgingly do it, staying up until midnight to complete it.

My other friend is a software product manager. Her mind races and is often miles ahead of her coworkers. People are taken aback by her rapid fire line of questioning. The engineers working on her project love her because she is logical. But its her managers and peers she has more difficulty with, mostly because they lack some of her critical thinking skills.

As for me, I’m a competent engineer whose people skills sometimes get in the way of my career. I sometimes open my mouth when it is best to keep it shut.

Throughout the evening it became clear there was a common thread behind our work woes. You see, all of us are dealing with less competent colleagues. But even more frustrating is that they don’t realize they are incompetent and don't ask for help when appropriate. As explained by my colleague, this is called the Dunning Kruger Effect: When people are so dumb, they don’t know how dumb they are.

I don’t mind when people know that they have shortcomings. I for one, am not the brightest, nor am I the most talented. But at least I have enough critical thinking to realize when I fall short some of the time. I may not progress as quickly as I would like, but at least I know when weak areas exist. What frustrates us is when someone is so clueless, they think they can do the job, but they can’t. And then we have to pick up the pieces.

As the evening wore on, we figured out some strategies for dealing with people with Dunning Kruger, or Dunning Kruger-ites. Here are our: 

Strategies for Managing “Dunning-Kruger”-ites:

1. Keep the Dunning-Kruger-ite busy with something long and menial to get them out of your hair. God forbid if they get bored and start messing around and harming actual work (as was the case with me). They might even be happier doing a task of this sort.
2. Vent and complain to someone astute with office politics. It helps to have the situation acknowledged through a different set of eyes. In my case, I vented with a mentor, who offered some key advice (see #3 below).
3. Actively monitor the Dunning-Krugerite’s work. “You can tell when a task is too hard for someone when they make a lot of excuses, and take too long to finish,” my mentor said. If someone with Dunning-Kruger is doing something they cannot do, they won’t know it. You have to actively monitor their work to see.
4. Try to get someone else to manage the Dunning-Kruger-ite.
5. Be very very nice. Usually the Dunning-Kruger-ite has good standing in your place of work because people feel sorry for them, otherwise they wouldn’t have lasted as long as they have. People have special soft spots for people who are both dumb and nice. The smart person who is mean will usually be punished far worse than the dumb person who is nice.

A Story For When I Feel Pessimistic

There’s a lot in the world to be pessimistic about right now. When Trump was elected, I screamed inside. I didn’t know what kind of country I was going to wake up to the following morning. The country was so vehemently sexist and so full of hatred and anger, that they voted for a malignant, racist, narcissist over arguably the most qualified presidential candidate to ever exist in the history of our country. Now that the mid-term elections are nearing, my mood is in a word: pessimistic. Because of gerrymandering, and because half the country is under the thrall of conservative state TV (Fox), and because terrorist acts perpetrated by violent white men have happened in recent days, I have doubts that normal democratic processes will actually endure this coming election day. 

But something happened to me today that actually had me sobbing in my car on my way home, and sobbing even as I write these words. My V.P. of Engineering is hands down one of the most brilliant people I’ve ever met. Because he is getting on in years, I am sometimes the repository of his pearls of wisdom. He said something that was so prescient today, that I felt like I could, just for a moment, glimpse past the micro-problems of our day, and it had me gasping.

ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles) are responsible for delivering nuclear warheads. After the rocket fuel is exhausted, the ICBM is essentially radio silent. If it isn’t radio silent than foreign enemies can hack into it and possibly jam it. If the rocket is essentially dumb/unhackable and radio silent, than how possibly can it reach it’s destination, and within feet of it? 

They launched test missiles from Edwards Air Force Base in California into the middle of the Pacific Ocean, using only simple Newtonian physics to drive them, but the missiles they launched did not reach their goal. When they relaunched the same missile after tweaking what they thought was a faulty rocket motor, the same result happened. Then some smart person realized they needed to do more than use simple idealized trajectories. The missiles had been pulled off course by tiny changes in gravity during flyover. 

So this is how we solved it. We MAPPED the earth’s gravitational disturbances. We launched a fleet of satellites and tracked their speeds and altitudes as they orbited the Earth. The extra gravitation pull from a mountain range, we logged it. The placid pull from the oceans, we mapped it. Even the minute fluctuations of the ground water, we recorded. Any ICBM that will ever be launched will be launched with a single set of mathematical coordinates. Without ever having any sensorial input on where it is in space, it will reach its target, having taken into account every ditch, hill, stream it will have passed. This might be the first and last time a gargantuan feat of science and engineering had me so awestruck, that I literally trembled in my socks.

This is WHY North Korea will be decades away from launching an accurate nuclear warhead on an ICBM, if they ever will. This is WHY we will eventually reverse global warming. This is why, even though our White House and Congress, and perhaps even our Supreme Court, is full of nincompoops, we will eventually come out on top.

The technical brilliance within our country is astounding. The technical talent is so deep, that even now it is not fully realized.

The depth and magnitude of our labor resources is breathtaking. 

We WILL pull through this. If not in this election cycle, then the next, or a couple of decades from now. Our country, even our planet, might be under threat, but we WILL meet this challenge. The next time I am feeling pessimistic about my country, or the world even, I should look back on this moment when I was awestruck.

What to do After a Minor Setback at Work

Have you ever had one of those days when your entire day’s work was wasted? That’s just what happened to me today. This is not so bad in and of itself. However, I’m under a great deal of pressure from the boss right now (I actually prompted myself to work the entire past weekend after my weekly one-on-one with him!) What’s worse, I misrepresented my work to others and just today found out that my stated progress was way over-exaggerated. Anyways, I feel like I’m in a pressure cooker to make up for my lost time. I would love to get my work to a point where I can truly state I’ve made the progress I had previously stated. So, I started thinking of ways that I can quickly recover so that I can start afresh. Here is my list for what to do after a minor setback at work:

1. Have a glass of wine. Ha ha, I’m not kidding. First thing I did when I got home was pour myself some Cabernet. 
2. Complain. To the husband that I had a bad day, and demand a hug.
3. Eat a healthy meal. I realize this is not always going to happen. It was just fortuitous that I came home to a wonderful wild King Salmon meal from my husband. I suppose some hot soup would have done the trick as well.
4. Take a hot shower. Now that I’ve cleaned off the day’s grime, I can think afresh.
5. Acknowledge the good that came out of my day. For instance, even though I made 0% progress to my end goal, I did end up learning a few things that will eventually get me there. 
6. Prepare myself to ask for help. My weakness is asking not asking for enough help, so I’ve steeled myself to be humble and actually ask for some. Tomorrow, I’m going to ask a junior engineer to help me with one of the line items I learned about in bullet above #5. I’m also going to ask the resident expert for some advice.
7. Lay my worries to bed. Write down my learnings and my To Do’s and then forget about it. 
8. Do something relaxing like reading or writing. Writing this blog post, for instance, has helped me!

How to have a constructive meeting

I just got out of a constructive meeting and I was inspired to share some tips on how to hold a good meeting (I wish this post was as funny as the picture, but unfortunately, I am dead serious):

(1) Discuss topics with stakeholders individually in advance.  Forwarding the agenda is not enough, a 1:1 verbal conversation is best, especially regarding controversial subjects.

(2) Have an attitude of openness and curiosity.  It makes the meeting so much more pleasant.

(3) Don't be afraid to bring the meeting back to the agenda when the conversation goes on a tangent, and it will go on a tangent when you have curious, creative people in attendance.

(4) It is all right to joke and laugh and make small talk to relax everyone.

(5) Be up-front about the decision outcomes you would like to see coming out of the meeting.

(6) Standing up to go to the white board wakes people up, and raises your energy level.

(7) Write meeting minutes, and keep track of action item completion.  The act of writing meeting minutes will uncover action items that weren't immediately obvious.

(8) Have a good handout/power point presentation.  This helps with sticking to the agenda and reminds the mediator of points that would otherwise be forgotten.

(9) Bone up. Knowing the subject matter inside and out before a meeting will forward the conversation more speedily and will make the meeting more constructive.

(10) Appreciate your meeting attendees out-loud. Thank them for their time, and appreciate their feedback.

For more tips on holding a successful meeting, please visit the following blog post.