Fear of What Exactly? - Cogito Coders

I’ll admit, I give into fear. A lot.

This past weekend, I was scheduled to run the Hot Chocolate Virtual 15K, which was supposed to be in Nashville. I came up with tons of excuses not to run:

The weather where I live was cold — -10C, with colder windchills. Almost none of the snow we had until then had melted, and what did turned into ice overnight.
Sidewalks don’t really exist here, and where there are sidewalks, they’re not well maintained. This means I usually run in the road.
But, none of the neighborhood roads are plowed, just sanded and salted. The major roads were plowed, but major means more traffic, so there’s really no good place to go when cars come by.

So what did I do? I drove carefully to my city rec center, paid for a day pass, and ran on one of their treadmills.

So if there was always the possibility of running in a safe, warm environment, why did I entertain the excuses? Simple — they were the product of my fear of pain:

Running in extremely cold weather is painful, even with gloves and fask masks, full stop.
The further I get from home, the longer I have to endure this pain just to get back.
I knew I hadn’t prepared properly in the past four to six weeks, so despite the cold, there would be some pain involved.

In fact, on the treadmill, there was pain involved. My feet started to burn like there were rocks in my shoes around the 10K mark. I was forced to walk several times just to make sure I could finish.

So what does this have to do with software development?

Fear Extends

Whenever I start a new creative project, whether it’s a game, a model, a drawing, an article, a story, or some other endeavor, there are always fears involved:

First, there’s the fear that I simply can’t do it.
Related to that is the fear that I can’t achieve the level of quality that I want.
There’s the fear that I’ll hit some problem I don’t understand or can’t solve.
To a smaller degree, there’s the fear that no one is even listening.
To a larger degree, there’s imposter symdrome, where I fear that people are listening, but they tell me I don’t know what I’m doing.

There’s another fear that sometimes hits me as well: What if I’m successful? Can I follow it up with another successful project? What if it’s not as good? What if everything changes now? How will I deal with that?

Fear Is Irrational

Fear was good for early hominids. It got us up in the morning to search for food and water. It made us fight or flee when we saw the lion stalking us in the bushes. It drove us to find safe places to sleep at night, and protect our families.

However, that same fight or flight reaction is out of place in the modern world, especially when applied to creative pursuits like writing software. No one if going to get eaten by a lion if a player jumps too high in a game. No one is going to make us sleep outside on the ground if we can’t get the shading on a figure correct. No one is going to take food away from us if we have to look something up on Stack Overflow.

Of course, as someone who struggles with acrophobia (fear of heights), understanding that rationally there are no life or death consequences really doesn’t help. The part of my brain that knows the ladder I am climbing is steady and safe cannot totally override the other part that is making my legs shake.

When it comes to creative pursuits, there is a part of me that is afraid that this next project will be the last one. Even though I rationally believe that’s untrue, there’s a part of me that reacts as though it were. And so I delay, I procrastinate, I make excuses why I should spend my time surfing the web for cute cat pictures rather than create.

So how do I overcome the fear?

Overcoming

This past fall, I put up holiday lights on my house. This required me to climb a ladder to the peak of my roof, about 6 meters in the air. I could have let my fear talk me out of it, give me excuses why it shouldn’t be done. But after living for 20+ years in a condominium, I wanted to have a house to decorate and light up against the dying days and long winter nights.

I trust my ladder, but I still had issues getting to the top. To make matters worse, I went up there numerous times to attach hooks I could use year after year. The last time I went up was easier than the first time. I was still dealing with the phobia, but I powered through, trusted the systems I have, and did what needed to be done.

I try to apply the same pattern to my fears of creating things:

I put systems into place that I trust and that I know work.
Every time my brain wants to dive into a safe space, I take a timed break.
I set a goal for what I want to accomplish so I can measure my progress, not success or failure.

The system I have used and like is the Pomodoro technique:

Set a timer for some length of time (my default is 25 minutes).
Once the timer is running, focus on your project.
- Try to minimize interruptions. Turn off notifications and your phone. Close the door. Put on your headphones.
  If you find yourself wandering, come back to the project without scolding yourself.
When the timer is up, take a break. My breaks are five minutes. Do whatever you need to do.
When the break is over, reset the timer and start again.

I’ve found this technique works well for me. For projects I want to do, sometimes just starting is all I need to keep myself in the zone, ignoring the breaks. For the slog, it’s helpful to keep me moving forward. I’ve used several timers over the years — they are available for just about any system or platform.

Using the Pomodoro technique helps overcome fear by taking my irrational brain out of the picture. I apply a rational analytic framework to doing the task, which allows me to apply my emotional irrational brain more creatively to the task itself.

Of course, I still procrastinate, and I still have fear — the timer is a tool, not a magic wand. But when I want to get something done, it’s better to have a tool.