Hey, everyone, and welcome to today's episode of Developer Team.
My name is Jonathan Cottrell and my goal on the show is to help driven developers like you find clarity, perspective and purpose in their careers.
Today, I want to share with you a very simple mental model that you can carry forward with you, as well as a bit of advice.
And we're going to talk about this mental model.
And you may have heard this phrase before, but I want you to learn how it can apply to your career in today's episode.
This is mostly a way of thinking about The model is not really one that you would apply in an isolated circumstance, but rather something that is ongoing, that you can incorporate into your regular thinking patterns.
The model is very simple.
In many different sports, notably tennis, there's a concept of forced and unforced errors.
All right.
So hopefully intuitively you can kind of figure this out.
The idea of a forced error is you can imagine, in tennis, if somebody hits a winning shot, this means you know, hits a shot that is on the other side of the court from you.
And it's, you know, it's going to drop right into place.
I'm not a tennis guy so I don't really know all the terminology there related to tennis beyond this specific term.
But the forced error means that even a very good player would very likely not have reached that shot to return it.
An unforced error, however, is somehow, for whatever reason, the shot was returnable. right?
It was considered returnable, but for whatever reason, the the player who could have returned it doesn't right.
Maybe they're, you know, maybe they hit it in the wrong direction.
Maybe they, you know, for whatever reason, they, they, their racket isn't turned quite properly.
I again I'm not a tennis person but uh, I'm not really familiar with all the ways that you can have an unforced error versus a forced error.
But suffice it to say, it is something that they have done wrong.
Some mistake they've committed is a blunder, right?
And you see this very often in pretty much every sport has some concept of this.
In many sports, there are kind of mechanical disadvantages that result, right?
So for example, in football, many penalties would count as unforced errors.
Some penalties count as forced errors.
But a lot of penalties in football count as unforced errors.
And the idea is that, for example, if you jump off sides, this is not something necessarily.
Anybody made the player on the line jump off sides.
They did it on accident.
It was something that was avoidable versus a forced error might be something that It's happening in the course of play.
It's very hard to prevent.
You know, maybe some kind of in the moment accident that the, you know, the player couldn't prevent.
But if you know the sport, has it identified as a penalty for whatever reason, even though it's preventable or is not preventable.
Right.
So.
This model is useful when thinking about problems that you can encounter in your career and the reason for those problems, right.
Because the vast majority of things that go well and the vast majority of things that don't go well something that goes wrong for you in your career can be categorized into these two categories.
And as a general rule.
As a general rule, there are a few things that would land in the unforced error category that you could, or rather, there's a few things that would land in the forced error category that are not something that almost anyone would commit.
In other words, forced errors happen to all of us.
Forced errors are the results very often of randomness, of chance, of situation, right?
These are things that are very hard to prevent, right?
Unforced errors are the ones that the best engineers, the most successful people.
They focus on the unforced errors.
Intuitively, we want to focus on the forced errors.
The kinds of things that are hard to predict are hard to prevent.
So for example, we might try to join a company that's extremely successful.
And the reason why this category, this forced error category, often is violated, based on that kind of choice where you're joining a company that you hope to be successful, is that you don't have a lot of control over that.
There's not a lot of traction that you as an individual can have on any reasonably sized company.
And so if you're trying to make decisions in this forced error category to try to reduce your forced errors, then you're playing the same game that most everyone else is playing.
Those forced errors.
No one wants them, but because they are so common they kind of act as a common denominator for everyone.
The people who recognize that forced errors are very hard to prevent, they're hard to predict.
They very much still appreciate opportunities to prevent them or reduce their effects, but they instead focus on the things they can control.
This is another version, another frame of reference, basically for focusing on the things that you do have control over.
And trying to reduce the risk of failure in the areas where you don't have as much control.
So focusing on your unforced errors, focusing on predicting mistakes, preventing them, reducing the risk of mistakes, trying to set up your working habits so that you reduce the likelihood of error, working with people that are willing to provide you additional feedback so that you can avoid unforced errors in that arena, in the interpersonal relationship arena.
There are a lot of ways.
Showing up on time.
Showing up late to a meeting.
Depending on who is in that meeting.
This can be an example, a very simple example, of an unforced error.
Another very simple example is posting something online.
That you know, especially in like a professional form, like on LinkedIn, this is a very common example.
Right.
Post posting something on LinkedIn that reduces your chances of of securing employment in the future.
Right.
Now, I'm not litigating.
I'm not here to give you advice on what kinds of things you should post on LinkedIn.
Instead, I'm here to give you advice on what things you shouldn't, right?
Unforced errors in this category.
It's absolutely possible that an unforced error of that kind, where you're expressing yourself in a particular way on a social platform, you've made a choice, but it was an unforced error.
Right now, to be clear uh, I don't want to uh suggest that there's that there's any reason why you should uh, you know, uh not share your opinions, right?
That's.
That's not the point of this episode.
Instead is to say that there are venues avenues, places where um The sharing of an opinion is kind of welcomed right.
And then there's other places where it's not.
Understanding when and where to share your opinions is a great example of a lot of opportunities for unforced errors.
So this is kind of like a common sense approach, right?
If I take this particular action, what could go wrong?
What person might see what I'm doing and say, oh, that's not a good choice.
That thing that he did is not a good choice.
That thing that she did, not a good choice.
And we're not just talking about blunders that are They get you in some kind of opinion trouble.
That's not the focus of this episode.
It's one example out of a thousand.
Other simple examples are things like not checking your work before you push to production.
Not loading up if you work on a UI.
Not loading the UI after you make a change before you push and deploy to production.
This is a very simple unforced error.
The vast majority of these things are very simple.
And so often, because they are so simple, we imagine that having a good career is more complicated than that.
Choosing to think about these small things may feel like reduction of the complexity of a career.
What's interesting is, as you encounter more experienced individuals in their careers, you'll recognize and we've talked about this on the show before you'll recognize that a lot of them tend to go back to the basics.
There's a reason why that's a phrase going back to the basics, going back to the fundamentals, going back to some kind of principles, back to the simplest things.
If we can't take care of the simple things, if we can't be reliable in our deliveries, if we can't be reliable when we're testing, if we're not on time, if we are erratic in our communication.
These are simple things, right.
And it is worthwhile to do kind of a self-audit on a regular basis.
Most of the time Most of the time, at least for me and for most of my reports, most of my colleagues you have an idea of what simple thing do you tend to fail at?
This is your unforced error category.
This is your unforced error risk.
This is a part of your career opportunity, even though it doesn't feel like it.
It feels like something small.
Again, I go back to this because it's something that I've dealt with in my career and with reports that I've had.
You're too quiet in meetings.
You don't turn your camera on often enough.
This seems crazy, right?
It seems like this would be such a strange specific thing to bring up in a conversation about your career.
But as it turns out, this is a small thing that adds up over time.
And it turns out to be an unforced error that you can control.
You can control how engaged you are.
You can control, are you on time?
You should write a list down.
You take the things I've talked about here, but write a list down.
What are the things that are common sense that I have control over, and where am I not actually doing a good job?
Where am I missing?
What common sense things, what simple unforced errors am I making?
Once you can recognize the unforced errors that you're making and reduce them, you're quickly climbing in terms of your.
If you were to look at all engineers across multiple companies or industries or whatever, the likelihood that you're going to improve your error rate above the average is extremely high.
Right.
Again, because forced errors are a shared common denominator.
Right.
So, you know, are you more competitive than the next engineer?
The best engineers are not the ones who are only thinking about the forced errors.
They are first thinking about the things they have the most control over, and that's the unforced errors.
Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of Developer Tea.
I realize that we got a little bit deep in some of these subjects.
A lot of this stuff, it comes down to personal judgment.
It comes down to your personal views on subjects and things like that.
And I want to be very clear that your right to free expression, that's not what we're talking about in this episode.
We're talking about choosing the right venues, understanding the effect that your words will have on other people, on others.
When you post publicly online, paying attention to that stuff.
If you care about your career, that is table stakes.
You have to pay attention to how you're presenting yourself in meetings, how you're presenting yourself in public forums online.
All of these places are important to pay attention to.
Otherwise, you will make these unforced errors that could kill your career.
Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of Developer Tea.
If you enjoyed this episode, please let me know.
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Thank you again for listening.
And until next time, enjoy your tea.
