Finite Bitching
Timebox your negativity
It has now been six weeks since my bike crash1. Surgery is complete, all braces are off, and I have full range of motion of both of my arms. The last (longer) step is to add strength back to my arms. But I’m done with the hard part. I am sleeping in a bed again, and I am sleeping through the night. I can type at my pre-wreck speed. I can stand at my desk for hours. And I can do the dishes again, so I feel like a contributing member of the family again. And in another two weeks, I’ll be back on the bike again.
I have shown you the spreadsheets I’ve been using to track my recovery progress2. I have studiously kept this daily logging going, and will continue to do so until PT ends in another six weeks. But over these last six weeks, there was one day, December 13th, where all I wrote down was “My F*ck It Day”. I just curled up for the day. I gave myself a day of not caring all that much about my recovery. 24 hours later, I went right back to the logging.
My F*ck-It Day reminded me of the “Wallow Week” I put on my calendar immediately following my exit from Microsoft. Overall, I had a positive outlook on my termination, celebrating all that I had done over my three decades and valuing the huge Microsoft family that I had built over that time. I had spent the three months leading up to this layoff getting myself mentally prepared, and intentionally building this positive spin. But I knew that I would need a bit of “F*ck It” time as well. So I put in on the calendar. This accomplished two things: it reserved space for me to just be sad about the turn of events, and it timeboxed the sadness. When the Wallow Week was over, I put it behind me and got to work.
Even an over-the-toptimist3 has a bad day. You don’t always need to run away from the negativity. You just have to constrain it’s time. You can handle a little of the negative stimuli, just keep the volume low enough to not sabotage your Energy Flywheel4.
As it goes with pity, so it goes with complaining. At the bottom of my “oft-uttered phrases” whiteboard at work5 was the phrase, “Finite Bitching”. Written under that was, “Vent. Move on.” I consider myself a pretty empathetic person, but I am very aware of the timeout I have for that empathy. The negative is there. The negative is real. The negative should be acknowledged. But the negative should not consume. The negative should not win.
“Finite Bitching” was the last phrase on my whiteboard intentionally. I would cover every possible oft-uttered phrase before this one. But, alas, there would come a time when I would point the person to that final phrase. I’ve heard your concerns. I’ve let you vent. Now it’s time to move on.
Transcending victim mentality
Randy Pausch delivered an incredible “Last Lecture”6 before exiting Carnegie Mellon University to fight his cancer. If there’s someone who had every right to complain, and to let the negativity win, it was this professor who was staring death in the face. Yet his lecture was a lesson in positivity. He used this lecture to pass on his gems7. Among them was this one, “If you took one-tenth the energy you put into complaining and applied it to solving the problem, you’d be surprised by how well things can work out... Complaining does not work as a strategy. We all have finite time and energy. Any time we spend whining is unlikely to help us achieve our goals. And it won’t make us happier.” So true. And Randy even uses the key “finite” word to underscore the fact that the clock is ticking.
Another relevant quote comes from Satya Nadella8, “I told these high-potential leaders that once you become a vice president, a partner in this endeavor, the whining is over. You can’t say the coffee around here is bad, or there aren’t enough good people, or I didn’t get the bonus.” He is sending a message to his leaders that they need to transcend the whining.
Both of these quotes set up the call to action. When you find yourself in a pity party or a bitch fest, you’re seeing things from the victim’s perspective. As a victim, you are helpless. Something was done to you. You are not in control of the situation. The call to action is to find the path out of victimhood to become part of the solution. What control, however small, do you have over the situation? That’s the foothold from which you proactively launch your counterattack of positivity.
Break the cycle
What complaints of yours run on regular repeat? “My sister-in-law annoys me.” “My commute sucks.” “My boss doesn’t give me any opportunities for growth.” “I am buried in my email.” Recognize your complaints, big and small, that are stuck in a loop, and apply Finite Bitching to break the cycle.
Is your sister-in-law going to change? Well, you could pick the top two or three things that annoy you the most, and then decide if they meet the bar for being worthy of having a conversation with her about it, or just note it as a difference in style … and move on.
Can you change anything about your commute? Can you work 4 10s instead of 5 8s? Can you shift your schedule to avoid peak hours? Can you move? Can you switch jobs? Can you try alternative transit that would allow you to be a passenger … where you could potentially get work done during the commute? Can you pick up a hobby that you can do on the commute to make the time more entertaining, such as listening to a podcast or learning a language? If none of these work for you, then recognize that you’ve tried to solve it, and now you just need to accept the reality.
What conversations can you have with your boss to make them more aware of your desires? It’s very easy to let the day-to-day work of the team dominate any 1:1 conversations, so how can you make sure you create space to talk specifically about career development and growth with your boss? Or have you tried this already, and now you’re realizing that the only path to growth is in another role, another team, or even another company?
And if you’re always buried in email, just stop bitching about it and follow my process for building your Email Triage Shield9. 🙂
You have the right to bitch. And you also have the ability to move on.
Positive New Year!
Footnotes
“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans”1
“Present day applications of optimism” section of Ambassador of Up
“Important vs. Urgent” section of Play the (Really) Long Game
I appreciate your highlighting the "victim" trap, which debilitates so many people. Focusing on what *is* in your control is one of 11 strategies research has shown we can employ to avoid falling into victimhood when in pressure situations and give ourselves agency to help improve things. So good!