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> My ultimate takeaway is to now default to listening without advice. Eve when it’s not listening to someone who’s venting, that can be really powerful anyway.
by bigiain 4y ago
> My ultimate takeaway is to now default to listening without advice.
Eve when it’s not listening to someone who’s venting, that can be really powerful anyway.
The best sys admin I’ve ever work with used to keep a teddy bear on the end of her desk. When people came to her with a question or problem she’d say “talk to the bear”. It’s astounding how often explaining the problem to an inanimate object results in the solution becoming obvious to the person ding the explaining.
(Note, she was really good at not saying in a rude or dismissive way, but she was somewhat on the spectrum and we ran a lot of cover to ensure the CEO didn’t get told to talk to the bear…)
- wkimeria 4y agoThis is why "rubber duck debugging" works. I've had good luck explaining any thorny technical problem to any inanimate object on my desk. Often times, the mere act of doing this makes me really pay attention to my assumptions and the information I have gathered.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- smcin 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging (At first I thought “talk to the bear” was some sort of folksy Eastern European way of telling the asker to go to hell)