Small Talk and Text Areas

What I'm Listening To

'Oh I know I spend too much time alone…'

Story From The Week

My team is fully remote and working from my office everyday makes me a little stir-crazy. So about twice a week, I work downtown at a co-working space. That means twice a week, I consume way too much free coffee. It also means that I can go to happy hour at fun downtown spots and attend events that I otherwise wouldn’t bother fighting the other dozens of Austinites circling the streets, vying for that perfect parking space.

So this week I attended the React Meetup in the building behind my co-working space, and I was eager for it, because the topic was Storybook. Earlier this year, I deployed our team’s Storybook instance with Chromatic, and I wanted to hear what ‘ol Lance Gliser thought of the technologies.

I nervously exited the elevator and entered a room full of mostly men eating pizza and drinking Modelos and making small talk. I have many strengths — small talk is not one of them. So naturally, I feel anxious in spaces like this one.

I found a spot in the back, because I knew I’d have to sneak out early to catch the last train out of downtown (and also the back feels safe). I stared at my phone for a while until a brave soul in front of me looped me into his conversation with a cool girl who described herself as a “newbie.”

I talked to them for the next five minutes or so (they were driving the conversation, of course!), and as we chatted about our past journeys, current careers and future aspirations, I was reminded of the unique, underlying bond of software developers. Somehow being in a room full of inquisitive, (mostly) humble, dedicated, and slightly awkward strangers makes me feel… not so alone. And I can’t say that for being in a room full of any other kind of strangers.

I got what a came for and learned a few Storybook tricks, but my main and unexpected takeaway walking into the elevator after the event was how thankful I am to be a part of this incredibly kind and weird community.

What Did I Learn?

I’m currently reading Think Again by Adam Grant (I highly recommend!), and what I learned in chapter five is that we often approach arguments as wars, but research shows we should view arguments as a dance. In order to effectively change someone else’s mind, we should do a few things:

• Find common ground with your opponent’s argument and agree with their valid points
• Make a small number of cohesive and compelling points (too many points can undermine your argument)
• Ask genuine questions

In doing so, we exhibit humility and curiosity, and we choreograph a way forward in our conversation instead of waging war.

What Made Me Confused...

I'll be honest -- this week has presented me with quite a challenge. I've been engrossed in refining a new functionality that empowers users to effortlessly navigate within a text area by "jumping" from text enclosed within brackets. For example, users can choose a portion of text to populate a text area. This text includes words and phrases enclosed in brackets, which are then automatically selected when the user presses the tab key or clicks the "Next" button. The feature will undoubtedly help providers in their daily workflow, but it has been a pain to develop. It seems that for every issue I resolve or new functionality I introduce, something else breaks! To put it simply, working with text areas this week has been a humbling learning experience.

An Interesting Link From The Internet

I gotta support one of my main inspirations in personal finance.