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by Laurent Bossavit.
Original Post: Nil nisi bonum
Feed Title: Incipient(thoughts)
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Feed Description: You're in a maze of twisty little decisions, all alike. You're in a maze of twisty little decisions, all different.
"Nil nisi bonum" is the abbreviated form of a Latin saying, sometimes translated as: "Do not speak badly of those who are dead".
The funny thing is that this translation is itself a violation of a broader "nil nisi bonum" principle, which could be stated as: "focus on the positive". The Latin saying is perhaps better translated as: "Speak kindly of the dead (or not at all)". The parenthetical clause is redundant, we can leave it out altogether.
"Speak kindly" is a lot more efficient than "do not speak badly". There are many ways one could speak of the dead, other than badly: with indifference; in detail; in outline; in prose, in poetry; and so on. This is true of more than just dead people. In general, the things we don't like, don't want, won't tolerate vastly outnumber the things we do like, do want, do find acceptable. To enumerate them all would be a huge waste of time. And to name, for instance, only one thing we don't like - that is just getting started on the enumeration.
So, we communicate more efficiently by saying what we like, what we want, what we prefer, how we'd change things for the better, and so on.
I've been given this advice before by several people, in different forms. For instance, in a conversation with a friend about where I wanted my consulting career to lead, I'd started one explanation with something like "I don't want to be an employee, I really don't like the situation this puts me in", and so on. The reply was "What is it that you *do* want ?" Early on I resisted this advice. To me it smacked of "positive thinking", that is, a mostly motivational thing, like a manager announcing a layoff by saying "the good news is that we'll manage to keep a few people on".
After a while and some practice, it did start to sink in. The point is not to be "positive", as in always all nice and happy, rather to be "constructive", even when a situation is clearly bad. In the previous paragraph the manager's statement is positive, but also besides the point. The positive statements I'd want to hear in such a situation are things like: "Here is how we plan to do right by those of you who are going to be fired."
In discussing a software design, you might come out with a first statement: "I don't like this design." Better, more effective, is to say "This and that is wrong with this design." Better still is to say "I can see where you're coming from with this design, and it does solve the stated problem; we can make it more abstract by renaming this bit, more encapsulated by moving that method, more cohesive by segregating these few classes in a separate cluster." Or more briefly: "Yah, that will do the job, only make it more MVC, y'know ?"
The disturbing thing is that it takes other people to listen to what you're saying and point out negative statements, then coax out of you a formulation that actually adds something to the conversation, that moves it forward. Without an observer I was quite unaware of the way I framed my observations and attempts at solutions. With some help it turns out to make a difference, in terms of being more effective at giving people critical feedback, finding solutions in sticky situations, and so on. And after a while you internalize the habit, and "catch" negative formulations before they're out. (Oh, so you censor yourself, you might ask; how can that be good. Well, no more so than if you have a habit of choosing your words carefully before speaking - of chewing a bit over the first thing that comes to your mind - a good thing, yes ?)
Listening is such a great habit in general. Listening to others, listening to yourself. More than a habit; more accurately, "listening" is an umbrella term for a whole array of techniques and models; a subdivision of an even larger umbrella term, "paying attention". Techniques that turn out to be very, very effective... and very, very hard to acquire. What makes them hard is that resolve is not enough. You can wake up in the morning, determined to listen more closely. To actually do it, though, you need specific techniques and models, and it's usually other people who provide them; if you could come up with them on your own, you already would have.
Perhaps that's more a statement about me than a general truth; there might be people who are better at introspection than I am, and who do "pull themselves by their own bootstraps" in this regard. Me, I get by with a little help from my friends... (You know who you are; thanks !)
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