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I'm definitely somebody who likes time to think things over and let my conflicting thoughts resolve themselves. I think in addition to this, though, I struggle

I'm definitely somebody who likes time to think things over and let my conflicting thoughts resolve themselves. I think in addition to this, though, I struggle to verbalise many of my thoughts and feelings no matter how long I'm given. I've always struggled with pair programming for this reason – I have a sort of gut instinct about many coding best practices, developed through years of experience, without always being able to efficiently summarise the whys.

xyzelement 4y ago
That sounds very much like the Intuitive dimension (I) on the Meyers Brigs. I am like that as well but I found it valuable to learn how to unpack and communicate the logic behind my intuition if I want to persuade others. It's also good because sometimes our intuition is wrong and you won't see that until you pick it apart.
- racktash 4y ago
  I agree regarding the usefulness of unpacking. I've been trying (with only limited success) to get better at verbalising thoughts/opinions and so on. It sounds like you may have had more luck than me – may I ask what has worked for you?
  - xyzelement 4y ago
    I'll share two things that I think are immediately actionable. First, I literally tell people I work with that this is what I am like if I think we're about to have one of those conversations. I literally say "I have an intuition that we have a problem (or whatever) here. I don't have it articulated well yet, but I don't want to ignore it. This conversation might start messily, but please ask me questions / call out what's unclear so I can unpack my intuition." People respect this. Second, I find that forcing myself to write it out is helpful. I often find that by paragraph 3 or 4, I realize what I am actually excited or worried about, so then I can rewrite with that as the lede, or simply now talk about it that way. Example: I can start of writing something like "I realized that developer X spent 2 months on something I don't think is valuable to the business. What is wrong with X and his manager?" and as I write about that, I realize maybe that what we actually don't have is a well-articulated strategy for value delivery and we need to solve that." My observation of developer X was just the thing that chafed me when I noticed it, but the reason it set off the intuitive alarm is that other thing.
    - racktash 4y ago
      Thank you for the tips!

xyzelement 4y ago

That sounds very much like the Intuitive dimension (I) on the Meyers Brigs. I am like that as well but I found it valuable to learn how to unpack and communicate the logic behind my intuition if I want to persuade others. It's also good because sometimes our intuition is wrong and you won't see that until you pick it apart.

racktash 4y ago
I agree regarding the usefulness of unpacking. I've been trying (with only limited success) to get better at verbalising thoughts/opinions and so on. It sounds like you may have had more luck than me – may I ask what has worked for you?
- xyzelement 4y ago
  I'll share two things that I think are immediately actionable. First, I literally tell people I work with that this is what I am like if I think we're about to have one of those conversations. I literally say "I have an intuition that we have a problem (or whatever) here. I don't have it articulated well yet, but I don't want to ignore it. This conversation might start messily, but please ask me questions / call out what's unclear so I can unpack my intuition." People respect this. Second, I find that forcing myself to write it out is helpful. I often find that by paragraph 3 or 4, I realize what I am actually excited or worried about, so then I can rewrite with that as the lede, or simply now talk about it that way. Example: I can start of writing something like "I realized that developer X spent 2 months on something I don't think is valuable to the business. What is wrong with X and his manager?" and as I write about that, I realize maybe that what we actually don't have is a well-articulated strategy for value delivery and we need to solve that." My observation of developer X was just the thing that chafed me when I noticed it, but the reason it set off the intuitive alarm is that other thing.
  - racktash 4y ago
    Thank you for the tips!