REBRIEF: don't be too good at a job you don't want

when to be reluctantly competent instead of simply competent

Welcome to debrief! This newsletter is on pause and will be sent out semimonthly while I finish writing my book. Please enjoy this writing and life update, as well as an essay from the archives. Thank you so much for reading—I can’t wait to be back in full force!

HELLO!!!!!

I am very excited because I am 55,735 words into the second draft of my book—which is actually a complete rewrite because I hated my first draft so much, I completely shelved it—and am finally feeling excited about the book! After the first draft, part of me regretted embarking on this journey in the first place. My first draft was aimless, meandering, at times (okay, often) self-indulgent—just a bunch of words in search of a why.

So I went back to the drawing board. Even though my book is nonfiction, upon the advice of my editor, I read¹ up on storytelling:

• The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell: a cross-cultural study of how the hero’s journey shows up in myths across geographies and history. Campbell convinced me that humans are inherently wired to learn lessons and pass down information through the vehicle of the hero’s journey.

• The Science of Storytelling by Will Storr*: overview of how neuroscience and storytelling interact and overlap. My initial book proposal was much more journalistic and distanced in tone, but after Storr’s book, I decided that letting readers get closer to me on the page would better serve the goal of disseminating knowledge and the themes I want to highlight.

• Naked, Drunk, and Writing by Adair Lara*: geared towards writing personal essays and memoirs, this book helped me think through scenes vs. narration, dialogue, and figuring out which parts of my life serve the book (versus simply serving me).

• 27 Essential Principles of Story by Daniel Joshua Rubin*: as the title suggests, just 27 principles of crafting stories. Rubin analyzes each principle using modern examples ranging from Shakespeare to South Park, The Godfather to Eminem’s Stan. While I found 27 principles to be a bit much—like 27?? really??—I still enjoyed it as a quick-and-dirty summary of many, many stories with commentary on why Rubin thought they exemplify the principle so well. I could read story summaries all day, though!

Honorable mention goes to Refuse to Be Done by Matt Bell*, which gives a framework for how to write a novel in three drafts. I only read the section about the second draft, which is what convinced me to completely shelve my first draft and start the second draft anew. Which led me to this:

And then Figjam. And then outlining. And then character sheets. And then finally—the first line of my second draft, which goes:

I am scared of many things—borrowing money, using the wrong fork, my dad dying before we tell each other “I love you”—but nothing compared to my fear of graduating from Yale.

Will it survive to the final draft? Probably not. Even as I paste it into this newsletter, I’m already questioning whether this is really the way to begin my book. It’s no “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” that’s for sure. But who knows! That’s a question for the next draft.

Okay, back to writing—and watching Netflix’s 3 Body Problem and playing Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (the second installment in the FFVII remake) and, yes, still doing some legal work! After my massive freakout in April about taxes and my emergency savings account, I’m relieved to report that I’ve replenished a good portion of it through a combination of selling some investments and funneling excess income from legal work into my savings account (instead of my investment accounts)—a lesson to myself about the great distance between my subjective experience of money and the objective reality of it. Looking back, I’m not even sure why I spiraled immediately into contemplating withdrawing from my retirement accounts early—well, that’s not true. I know why: financial anxiety.

And now, here’s a little advice from the archives on how to do a good job at something you don’t want to do.

Love you all so much! xx

* This newsletter contains affiliate links, which are denoted with a *, which means I earn a small commission if you click through and make a purchase.

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."

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... ◆

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1. And by “read,” I mean sometimes read and sometimes listened to Blinkist summaries of. Ya girl isn’t that fast of a reader!