Reflection's Slippery Slope

Reflecting on submitting work and avoiding self-hate

Published on: 2/12/2024

Man looking out over a slippery slope.

I completed the take home assignment for my job interview this morning. I feel a lot of feelings about it. I think I’m mostly feeling insecure. I have an overwhelming desire to explain myself and the reasoning behind what I perceive as shortcomings of my finished product. I can’t tell if this type of reflection is healthy or not. On the one hand, the more I think about what I would have done differently, the more likely I am to learn some lessons that I can apply in the future. On the other hand, I’m feeling quite anxious about it all to a point where my self-confidence is taking a hit.

So it seems I should focus on maintaining the former type of reflection and resist the latter? Or are both types necessary for effective reflection?

The interplay seems to be:

  1. I orient myself to the perspective of the stakeholder who will be evaluating me and eventually interviewing me.
  2. I assume they hold a certain level of power over me wrought by their intelligence and success.
  3. I imagine them judging me harshly because I am not as talented or successful as they are.
  4. I desperately come up with ways to defend myself and my work.
  5. The points I make to defend myself seem to be grounded in reality, but also feel like excuses for doing lazy or low-quality work on the assignment.
  6. I imagine the stakeholders rejecting me because, from their perspective, I suck at what I do.
  7. I get down on myself because the stakeholders are right–I suck.
  8. Then I get angry and remind myself that I don’t suck.
  9. I decide that if these stakeholders reject me then they’re either making a mistake, or they’re not the type of stakeholders I should be working with.
  10. I figure that yes, there are definitely things I could’ve done better, learned more about, applied better prior to submitting the assignment. But also that what I submitted is valuable and comes from a place of genuine and skilled effort.
  11. I resolve to apply the specific lessons to future situations, and accept that a large proportion of my fate in this process lies outside of my control.

I think I’m saying that both types of reflection can complement each other and lead to growth opportunities. The dance is to maintain humility in instances where I’m rejected for legitimate reasons, and to also maintain self-confidence at the top of the slippery slope of “maybe I am just a talentless piece of shit”.

Word goal: 100
Total words: 417 ✅