Illusory superiority is, according to Wikipedia's definition, "a cognitive bias that causes people to overestimate their positive qualities and abilities and to underestimate their negative qualities, relative to others"
It is that well-known, well documented phenomenon (also known as the above average effect) that makes so easy for us (T)IT professionals to judge and criticize other people's work. It's a fact of life.
In other words, we tend naturally to have a distorted perception of reality when it comes to evaluate the quality/effectiveness of our work compared to the quality/effectiveness of the work of our colleagues.
It is extremely therapeutic, in order to come back to reality, to periodically try to spot major flaws in your own work: poor design or shitty code, completely wrong approach to problems, wrong organizational choices. Try to be as cruel as possible (which means: as cruel as you would be if you were analyzing other people's work).
The epiphany will occur when you'll find yourself wondering, confused: "did I really write this code?" (or "did I really choose this process? did I really proposed this solution? did I really ignore this issue?", depending on what your actual work is).
Everybody makes mistakes, experience allows us to improve ourselves recognizing them, but this virtuous path requires humility, as written in almost all books of self improvement written by spiritual gurus, genuinely illuminated guides or simply people which love making money selling books about this kind of stuff (And they actually sell them: smart guys, definitely above the average).
In other words, we tend naturally to have a distorted perception of reality when it comes to evaluate the quality/effectiveness of our work compared to the quality/effectiveness of the work of our colleagues.
It is extremely therapeutic, in order to come back to reality, to periodically try to spot major flaws in your own work: poor design or shitty code, completely wrong approach to problems, wrong organizational choices. Try to be as cruel as possible (which means: as cruel as you would be if you were analyzing other people's work).
The epiphany will occur when you'll find yourself wondering, confused: "did I really write this code?" (or "did I really choose this process? did I really proposed this solution? did I really ignore this issue?", depending on what your actual work is).
Everybody makes mistakes, experience allows us to improve ourselves recognizing them, but this virtuous path requires humility, as written in almost all books of self improvement written by spiritual gurus, genuinely illuminated guides or simply people which love making money selling books about this kind of stuff (And they actually sell them: smart guys, definitely above the average).
R U talking 2 me?
ReplyDeleteR U talking 2 me?
Are you trying to say my code is not good? ;-)
mm cc