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How to Get over Fear of Disappointing Others (FODO)
- nicbou 5y agoI don't know what it is about life coaches and their writing style, but a few sentences in, I just knew this guy had a course to sell. Is there anything that makes Nick qualified to provide that advice?
- amelius 5y agoHe disappointed me but still made that website. So I'd say, yes.
- wffurr 5y agoMaybe they go to other life coaches who coach them into being a life coach and indoctrinate them into the writing style.
- Jensson 5y agoThe writing style is what marketers use. Marketers with no product becomes life coaches or similar.
- conductr 5y agoI completely don’t understand the newsletter trend. I get why marketers like it, but why on earth would anyone want to join [this guy’s] newsletter. The fact well funded startups like substack chasing this market is insane to me. I’m probably just out of touch. I also didn’t like RSS when it was big. I prefer to control my intake of content instead of subscribing to essentially a push method.
- Factorium 5y agoIts the Minto Pyramid Principle / Situation Complication Question Answer: https://www.richardhare.com/2007/09/03/the-minto-pyramid-principle-scqa/ https://www.richardhare.com/2007/09/03/the-minto-pyramid-pri...
- nbbbbbbbhg 5y agoFear of disappointing others is just about the only thing that actually motivates me to focus, as an ADD person. I did well in school almost solely because I didn't want to let down my teachers. I work now so I don't let down my team. If I only cared about what I thought, I'd never have the motivation to finish anything
- darylteo 5y agoSame here perhaps, but on the other hand... work life balance is sorely missing. Pulling 12 hour days, working 2 jobs, saying yes to everything and everyone...
- ebiester 5y agoThis article is about what you say "yes" to at the start, rather than meeting your commitments. If you are doing this such that you don't let someone down because you said you would do something, that is separate from you being afraid to say no when you do not have the capacity to say yes without hurting yourself.
- nobody0 5y agoIt does serve a way to bear boredom and get things done.
- agumonkey 5y agoPersonally I stopped this because I became obsessed with performance, depressed, isolated and massively rotting because most of the population couldn't care less about your performance (they'll get jealous, or maybe over idolize you.. it's never what I want anyway). I'm in Dude (of The Big Lebowsky) mode nowadays.
- kevinmgranger 5y agoI operated this way for years, and it's why I became burnt out. It was weaponizing anxiety against myself to overcome the inhibitions of AD(H)D, instead of properly addressing it with a medical professional.
- yamazakiwi 5y ago
- wayoutthere 5y agoThere’s just a certain point in your career where you have way too much to do and you realize you’ll never get it all done. I have a zillion things in my personal backlog, and I just accept that some of them won’t get done. I’m always going to be disappointing someone. Besides, a person’s disappointment stems from their own expectations going unmet, not your competency. Frequently those expectations weren’t reasonable in the first place.
- myself248 5y agoSure, because pretty much by definition, if they asked you to do a thing because they weren't competent to do it themselves, they also weren't competent to assess the reasonbleness of the request. This seems obvious when I say it this way, but internally my mind is exploding right now...
- conductr 5y agoI don’t find competencies to be a factor at all. I suppose if you’re being asked to do something by a peer, it could be something they are not good at. But that’s just teamwork 101. It’s just as likely I may ask them for help on something i know I’m not the best at. Most of this stuff comes from other departments/functions or just higher up the org chart. Everyone in an organization has their lane, and it would be out of place for someone do something too deep in another person’s/team’s area of expertise. For example, I’m in corp finance. Everyone in the company comes to me for financial analysis. It’s not that they are necessarily unfamiliar with spreadsheets or building some rather simple analysis. Many of them have MBAs, etc of which Finance was a major component. It’s that my team is the default go to for all things financial.
- conductr 5y ago> Frequently those expectations weren’t reasonable in the first place Even when reasonable, they often lack context as to competing priorities. So they just expect, until you tell them there are higher priority items. At that point, there can be discussion about priorities if necessary.
- black_13 5y agoDidnt Pop Copy’s training materials talk about this?
- Hokusai 5y agoIn Sweden I have seen that people just understand that others are human. If you stay at home because you have a sick kid, I support that. If I leave half an hour early because I have a doctor appointment my manager understands. My manager may take extra vacation days and that is ok. One employee does not sabotage the needs of the others, work is done anyway and everything works better when people is relaxed and can focus when needed instead of overworked. I understand that in countries like the USA employees complain about other employees just for being sick and call them lazy, and management forces people to do extra hours to impress upper management. Or at least I get that from many comments here in HN were I have seen people been called lazy for having human needs or caring for their families.
- mypastself 5y agoI’m sure some commenters here will agree with your points, but I think you’re generalizing. I’m not even joking, I’ve come across a number of Swedes on the internet who seemed to have this judgmental, superior and vaguely nationalist stance, and your comment does nothing to dispel that impression. Yet I wouldn’t dare say Swedish people are like that.
- motohagiography 5y agoThe immoderate version of this kind of setting boundaries can be percieved as rejecting normal reciprocity. There's also probably a cliché that the lack of boundaries is for meek personalities, but charismatic personalities also lack them. Russell Brand is a great example of a charismatic personality who seems to lack personal boundaries, and being creative is all about testing them, so it's not always bad or an anti-pattern, but being unable to manage it means you aren't getting value from it - literally, unmanaged. It can manifest either as being overly submissive and accomodating while accumulating resentment in the meek case, or being unable to handle silence and being overly diplomatic or entertaining in the charismatic case. Not having consistent personal boundaries can create the expectation for others to reciprocate the lack of boundaries we present with. It becomes very bad news when you resent others for not reciprocating all the "nice" things you did for them to avoid their perceived disappointment. Anyway, when you promote someone out of an IC role to a management role, the initial struggle is often due to this FODO habit that they were rewarded for and it was the thing that helped them succeed as an IC, but hampers them as a leader. What got you here isn't what you need for the next stage, etc. The concept is so important, I wish it were part of a common curriculum. This named FODO anxiety is the underlying factor in a number of anti-patterns, like what bullies exploit, how large groups of people become cowed, how some personalities can derail teams. This writer is telling us why we should manage this, whereas I think everyone should be responsible for developing the ability to manage FODO as a life skill.
- pmdulaney 5y agoThanks for your insightful comments. Something for me that falls under the rubric of "normal reciprocity" is an explanatory apology. If a friend has agreed to meet me for coffee somewhere and arrives 30 minutes late and just says "Sorry!" with no explanation, I get peeved. I feel deserve some explanation as to why 30 minutes of my life was wasted.
- emerged 5y agoI’ve got this sorted out with work, because I feel fully confident that losing my job is more likely to be net good than net bad. To some extent the job is disposable, they lack the leverage to abuse me. It’s different with family (parents and siblings) who have been absolutely unsupportive to me personally yet continually insist that I do X/Y/Z for them every week. By pushing back and trying to reduce this stressor, they gaslight and victim blame instead of using empathy. But what am I to do? Cut them off and be a pariah from the extended family for the rest of life?
- bellyfullofbac 5y ago> But what am I to do? Cut them off and be a pariah from the extended family for the rest of life? Easy for me to say, but what about yes? Their behaviour is what is worth of them becoming the pariahs. If the extended family are decent, you could try talking to them directly, although I guess not a lot of people have understanding with kids who "disown" their parents.
- emerged 5y agoThat wouldn’t work because family consider my mother to be a saint. She’s 180 degrees different person to them. That creates a shield which keeps me locked in.
- quesera 5y agoThis is classic abusive behavior. Sorry, I don't know your mother and I don't like to cast aspersions, but when you identify abuse, you should withdraw yourself from it if you are able. Move away (to a city, at least a few hrs away, further is even better) and build a new life somewhere else. Meet people, get involved in things, sleep only when you must. "So sorry family, life drew me to XXX and I miss you terribly too!" -- this is the narration to describe so many happy and healthy people's familial relationships. Family that cares about you will respond with "we're really happy for you, but we miss seeing you", family that does not care will respond with "how could you leave?". You can decide for yourself how to deal with people who do not care about you, but you can do it from far enough away that it doesn't have to occupy so much of your mental energy.
- awinter-py 5y agoI can't carry it for you mr fodo but I can carry you?