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From personal experience: I thought my lack of assertiveness came from the lack of self-confidence. But once my self confidence got fixed (which is a whole sepa

• errantmind 5y ago
  Agreed. Not feeling obligated to care is a valuable way to moderate overreaching requests. This is different than apathy, as it is not a nihilistic impulse. Instead it is a refusal agree to the implicit premise of level of 'importance'. Some people will be offended at this as not taking their request as seriously as they are but it can be expressed in such a way as to say "No, I'd like to be helpful but I have other priorities which require my attention". Or "No, I'd like to be helpful but this is outside the scope of my responsibilities".
• rufus_foreman 5y ago
  >> The fine art of not giving a shit trumps all other virtues. That's pretty much where I'm at. Assertiveness might be needed once in a while but if it's some sort of daily thing for you there's probably something not right in your life. It's like in Caddyshack when Carl thinks the groundskeeper is asking him to kill all the golfers on the course so he has to start to push back a little bit but when he figures out that its just gophers instead of golfers he's OK with it, "We can do that. We don't even need a reason". That's my attitude towards product managers these days. Sure, we don't even need a reason. They come to me with some poorly thought out unspecced idea that doesn't make much business sense or solve any problem that anyone has ever had, so OK, you know what team? We're gonna ship some fucking code.