competence can be a curse.
sometimes, being great at your job can mean being terrible at your life
🎶 Used to Know Me - Charli XCX (I binged Hacks recently and adored when this song came on)
I know, I know--it's been a terribly long time, and I'm sorry. This career transition has turned out to be a fun exercise in constantly disappointing myself. I somehow expected that I would be a fully optimized working being in light of how optimized a working being I was in the law firm environment, but alas. It might be time for me to admit that I need help, which is something I always struggled with. (As a sixth-year associate, I still mostly did my own administrative tasks. I started getting some talking-tos from partners to stop doing that, but I left the firm before I could implement any meaningful changes on that front. Oops.)
So what have I been doing that has driven me to finally admit that I need help? Well, I obsessed over whether and how I could meaningfully and sensibly have a Patreon (which launched on August 1!), spent three hours alone figuring out music bots on my Discord, and read multiple self-help books (most recently: The Startup of You*) before realizing I still felt directionless and signing up with a career coach who was recommended by a college friend. As it turns out, Cinda Canning (portrayed by Tina Fey) from Only Murders in the Building had it very right when she gave her abused assistant some secondhand advice:
When I was an intern at The Post, Kay Graham gave me a great piece of advice. She said, "Don't be too good at a job you don't want."
sometimes, being great at a job can mean being terrible at your life.
Ever since I can remember, I was obsessed with the idea of doing a capital-G Great job. It didn't matter what the job was. Manning the cash register? I was off by less than $1 in cash reconciliation after handling the midnight release of the last Harry Potter book. Summer consulting gig? I slept under my desk on the final night of my internship, after my supervisor changed all of the parameters of the SQL query I was running. Law firm summer associate? My mom suggested that I go on coffee runs for the partners, and I almost did. (Good thing I didn't.)
I've been in plenty of conversations where we'd joke about work being a pie-eating contest where the prize was more pie, but I haven't been in a lot of discussions about what kinds of pie we should eat. Not all pies are created equal, after all. I adore lemon meringue and pumpkin, but cherry? Ew.
The danger of being Great at something is that inevitably, you will be asked to do more of that something, regardless of your own desire. It's a catch-22 for people who are Type A, overachievers, or people-pleasers. You want to be Great at everything because, well, you have integrity/take pride in your work/are a team player/don't want to let others down/etc. But by being Great at everything, you subjugate your own will to the asks of others. The answer can't lie in just being selectively incompetent, can it?
Sort of. I call it reluctant competence. This is a tactic that can only be employed after you've established that you are Great at everything. Use it too early, and you'll just seem like you don't want to work. (And we can go into anti-capitalism all we want, but put that aside for now. Coming off like you don't want to work in your workplace is a ticket to getting fired and having all of your coworkers hate you. Let's assume that is a suboptimal result.)
Use reluctant competence when you're asked to do something that you don't really want to do and would like to do less of, for some reason or other. Maybe it doesn't align with your future goals; maybe you'd like to try something new; maybe you just plain hate it. Accept the task (if you are able to), do your normal Great job, and after the task is over--so your Great job is at the forefront of everyone's minds--have a check-in with your boss about your work allocation. Mention to them directly that you'd like to do less of A (what you just did) and more of B. And every time thereafter that you are asked to do A, do a Great job, and then mention in the post mortem emails that you appreciate the opportunity to do A and would like to get more exposure to B going forward. Don't let up until you get more of B and less of A. If your workplace values you and your contributions, they should try to take your preferences into account. And if they don't, then it's time to start answering those recruiter emails...
🔖 open tabs
If you've ever wanted to have a 1-on-1 with me about your personal statement, navigating the law firm, or anything else, you can now do so on my Patreon! I offer limited openings every month, as well as a monthly contest that is open to all patrons. You'll also get access to bonus content, behind-the-scenes, and advance question submission to AMAs (to ensure that I see your question instead of just hoping I see it in the chat during the AMA itself). I can't tell you how many hours I agonized over what to offer, but I'm really proud of what I came up with and the Discord server setup and rules I landed on.
A few weeks ago, I was getting drinks with a friend when we accidentally stumbled upon the infamous Pharma Bro's meet-and-greet. I still think the entire story is a wild ride and worth a read (a Bloomberg journalist covering the investigation and trial ended up quitting her job and divorcing her husband because she fell in love with Martin Shkreli), but after watching Jordan Peele's new movie this week, [warning: spoilers for Nope in the link] I question my own attraction to the strange and spectacular. As a person who represents herself online, I often struggle with the tension between telling stories through the lens of spectacle (because The Algorithm loves spectacles) and being "boring" when being matter-of-fact.
Twitch streamers like Amouranth open up about real-life stalking and harassment. I haven't talked yet about the real, real reason I went into privacy law (I probably will one day), but it had to do with online fun-and-games going awry and leading to negative impacts IRL. Professor Danielle Citron's book on this topic, Hate Crimes in Cyberspace*, remains as relevant now as when it was first published in 2016. (Topic aside, Professor Citron is one of my academic crushes--she marries academic rigor with mainstream communication, something that I wish more academics would prioritize.)
I found this article about Gen Z in the workplace fascinating not so much because of the article itself but the comments. Generational wars are naturally spectacles, and I have a love-hate relationship with such temporal classifications of culture. The comment I found most thought-provoking: I'd pit the 40-60-year-olds at my firm against my company's Gen Z and Millennials any day of the week and twice on Sunday. We'd absolutely destroy them. I can't imagine telling our clients we can't do the work because we need more time off, they'd just go to the next firm and we'd lose business. Gen Z, best of luck when you've got to compete for work, which will happen one day... Needless to say, I'm definitely going to be thinking about this comment as I continue working on my book about law firm culture.
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