Praise, Criticism, and Self-Reflection: Productivity Lessons From a Simpler Time
By Kim Bullock | July 25, 2022 |
Note: This post is adapted from an essay I wrote in a much simpler time (2010), but the lessons learned from this self-reflection exercise are still relevant and may help others who flounder in these uncertain times.
When my daughters were little, I composed letters to their new teachers before each school year. They were a CliffsNotes of strengths, weaknesses, and quirks, offered in the hope of sparing said teacher from puzzling these things out for at least one kid in their class. My goal was to simply inform and then get out of their way. Though I made no requests for special treatment, my older daughter’s teachers invariably offered to let her have assignments early during Nutcracker season. My younger daughter’s teachers were glad I warned them that she’d hold a silent but profound grudge if ever told to “move her clip” for something she had not done.
One year, after composing the letters, I wondered what might be said about me if I were the one headed back to school. I turned it into a writing prompt. My first (2010) letter was meant to be silly yet felt uncomfortably accurate. Same with a revision in 2014. Below is my 2022 version. Pretty sure I’d now qualify for an IEP.
Dear Teacher,
Kim will be in your grade 44 class this year and I thought you might want to know a bit about her before the first day.
A messy desk or sloppy work is a clear indication of boredom. Boredom often leads to doom-scrolling, which leads to tears, rage, and devouring articles about the most welcoming countries for American refugees. You have my total support if you choose to confiscate her phone during the school day, though you may want to offer an alternative fixation.
Assigning a hundred-page dissertation on some obscure historical or literary figure would work—she’d love that—though I suspect her peers might feel differently. Her focus can be astounding when she’s interested in something, like when she (for fun) spent a week feverishly reading and transcribing a stack of letters from the 1840s. We won’t talk about the blog post she was supposed to be writing.
Too many numbers frighten and overwhelm Kim. If you replace said numbers with x and y she will claim she has COVID the next day. Please warn me of any upcoming algebra units so I can stock up on home tests and call her bluff.
Other than for higher level math, expect she will be top of the class academically. She always has been.
Kim is an introvert and not prone to disruptive outbursts unless the volume of noise in the classroom rises past the point where she can hear herself think. That level is much lower in Kim than in the average middle-aged adult and, once crossed, will lead to agitation. Any complaints about itchy tags or lumps in socks are Real and a Big Deal. If possible, allow her to stay in at recess and read on those days. She’ll require no supervision.
Snacks are always good. A hungry Kim is a hangry Kim.
It has been a disruptive couple of years with the pandemic, hormonal changes, family health issues, an impending empty nest, impossible-to-meet deadlines, the loss of bodily autonomy, and an upcoming trip to Prague that she fears won’t happen in this airline hellscape. Sitting still is a challenge. Insisting she write 100 words before leaving her seat may motivate productivity. Tying her to her chair is also an acceptable solution.
Good Luck!
Kim’s Mom
Why did I waste five minutes of my life reading that? How could this possibly help me?
Imagine for a moment that you are not you, but rather someone who knows you well, loves you, and has your best interest at heart. If that person were to honestly describe the good, the not-so-good, and the uniquely you to a stranger, what would they say? What praise would they give? What traits would they claim hold you back? What quirks delight or annoy them and why?
Here’s why that’s important.
Naming your strengths reminds you they exist
It is easy to focus only on the things we fail at, especially in times of high stress. We gained ten pounds on our “diet”. We fumbled a presentation at work. We didn’t sit down to write once in the last week.
My fictional ‘mom’ poked fun in that letter, but any stranger reading it would get that I am smart, sensitive, and can have a tremendous capacity for focus. I don’t know about you, but I rarely receive verbal complements as an adult, let alone written ones. There is something powerful about seeing the praise in print and hearing the words in your head as you read them. It reinforces the positive, which in turn can increase confidence and productivity.
Our challenges may have an explanation—and a solution
Most of us are aware of our shortcomings but may not have given much thought as to how or why they developed. If there are triggers that can/should be avoided and how. Writing as a well-meaning parent allows you to view yourself from an outside and forgiving perspective. One that honestly wants you to thrive. Weaknesses are identified, possible explanations are offered (stress, hormones, family issues, political terror). Harmful patterns are identified (doom scrolling, procrastination). Possible workarounds are presented.
Do I know that putting my phone across the room might prevent me from interrupting my work to scroll through Twitter for a minute or ten? Of course. Do I take that simple step much of the time? Not even remotely. Do I feel called out seeing my ‘mom’ point this out? You betcha, perhaps even more so because ‘mom’ is really me. (As I type this, my phone is well out of reach and I’m staying more or less on task.)
Repeating the exercise periodically may be especially illuminating
I’ve been acutely aware of focus issues for the past few years, but had convinced myself that stress and age-related hormonal issues were the cause. Then I re-read what I’d written in 2010 and 2014. Both include references to alternating bouts of hyperfocus and having the attention span of a gnat. The 2014 letter actually ends with this line: No, she doesn’t have ADHD. It just seems like it sometimes.
I didn’t know ADHD presents differently in women back in 2014. I do now. This exercise inadvertently armed me with proof of long-term patterns that may help me receive an appropriate diagnosis and treatment. It may also help me let go of the shame that comes with the compulsion to read a novel instead of write one when a deadline looms. I’m not lazy. I’m not unmotivated. I don’t lack self-control. I just have 42,576 tabs open in my brain and must shut some down to function.
Obviously, individual epiphanies will vary, but if productivity issues can be traced to negative patterns of thought or behavior, it is bound to be helpful to shine a light on those patterns, to identify and confront them. Maybe the secret to getting words on the page is obvious (turn off phone notifications) or practical (set a schedule and stick with it). Maybe it’s medical. Maybe it is as simple as starting the day with coffee and your novel instead of coffee and Facebook.
Sometimes ‘Mom’ really does know best.
Over to you: Have you ever done a self-reflection exercise that proved especially helpful? If so, what was it and what did you learn from it? Have you identified and changed patterns of your own behavior or thought processes that helped productivity? Do times of uncertainty paralyze or motivate you creatively?
Kim (she/her) has an M.A. in English from Iowa State University. She writes mainly historical fiction, though has also contributed non-fiction articles to historical and Arts and Crafts publications in both the United States and Canada. She has just finished The Oak Lovers, a novel based on the rather colorful life of her great-grandfather, landscape painter Carl Ahrens.
[coffee]
Hi Kim. Your post provides solid proof that you are indeed smart, sensitive and capable of focus. Not to mention witty (grade 44 class, this airline hellscape, the attention span of a gnat, et al). As far as I’m concerned, it would be an abdication of responsibility to yourself to change much. If anything. Besides, as a smartypants smart person, you must also know that labeling a fault often seems to be enough correction. You have focused your attention and succeeded in sussing out your flaws. Mission accomplished. Thanks for this. I don’t have the cell phone monkey on my back. I just start the day by reading and commenting on WU posts instead of being “productive.” Will I fix this? Highly unlikely.
Hi Barry,
I don’t know what, if anything, I’ll do about it. Getting an actual diagnosis sounds fairly complicated and time consuming, but I haven’t ruled out doing so. I do worry about medication taking away some of my creativity, though there are days I truly would love to have the ability to sit still and get something done without the terror of a deadline looming. Hyperfocus is amazing – I once wrote a draft of a whole novel in three months – but I can’t seem to force myself into that mode.
Thanks for commenting!
Kim
Just added to Ken’s wish list: “more of Kim’s tips.”
This is what so many of us need — the ability to start with our own natures and then reverse engineer the work patterns and the environment that keep us moving. We writers are each such unique people (who’d have guessed?), that often what we need most is to find the kind of prompts, requirements, schedules, rewards, and all the rest of the tools that work for us. In a world of one-size-fits-all clickbait and expectations, that kind of fit takes some thought.
Frank Sinatra was understating it. The only way we’ll really get it done at all, is to do it our way.
It really was a fun exercise. I did the first one as a joke. The second time I used as a very old (not on WU) blog post. Glad I did them and could find them because I was convinced these focus issues are more recent. Oddly, the first draft of what is now my WIP was done back on 2004 and I wrote it in three months during the nap times of my now 21 year old. If that’s not “hyperfocus” I don’t know what is. Thanks for commenting!
Kim, I’m an eight year old trapped in a grown up body. So I truly relate. Enjoy your trip to Europe. I went in May and had zero travel issues. Okay. I need to go curl my hair around a pencil while I day dream. I mean get my chores done…
Glad I’m not the only one! Hot tip for paying attention during zoom meetings: have a fidget toy. I like one of those popper ones where you press these bubble things from side to side. I only use it if I’m muted, but it really helps.
Oh Kim, I love this post so much!! It doesn’t get any better than: “view [ing] yourself from an outside and forgiving perspective. One that honestly wants you to thrive.”
That said, and since you asked: I’ve done an exercise that is, maybe, the inverse or complement, which is to have the protagonist of my current WIP tell me what she thinks of me, good and bad, with suggestions for how I might address the hang-ups that I like to view as lovable quirks. Clearly, not as kind and loving as your exercise, but helpful in its own way. And what I’ve come to see and feel and believe is that I need to view ALL my characters, no exceptions, as people who are worthy of love and respect, regardless of the poor choices they might make at points along the way. No different from how I need to view “real people” (and myself). More and more, I find that the art/writing that feels worth engaging with, for me, stems from this sense of compassionate humanity.
Thank you for putting it so eloquently.
That sounds like an interesting exercise, too, Barbara! Laughing about the ‘lovable quirks.” I’m not sure that my husband or my kids find mine all that “lovable” I was talking about this post the other night with my older daughter, and the focus issues I’ve had for all these years. Her long-term boyfriend was there and he piped up “sounds like you have ADHD” before I got to that part. He has it, so we compared notes. My daughter just sat there shaking her head. Poor girl “loved” my quirks so much that she found a partner with the same ones!
It’s wonderful that you know yourself so well. And your creative approach to revealing your yearnings and the things that can get in the way, makes you an even better writer. Why? Because as a writer, in my view, we need to allow our own humanity to guide us in every scene, in every character. I don’t read to find myself alone, I read to find in others aspects of myself. You did that here, Kim. And I enjoy our exchanges on social media. BE YOU, WRITE ON.
Thank you so much! I enjoy those exchanges as well.
Hi Kim — Good for you for doing the hard work of self-reflection. We writers need to be especially good at it, and I’ve long known you to be an exceptional writer. I’m like Barry, not so attached to the phone thing. Not to say I can’t be “addicted” to online adrenaline rush (it’s why I left FB). I think it’s got a lot to do with the fact that for years I carried a cellphone dedicated to work emergencies. That sort of put the kibosh on any sort of phone fondness.
Still, we all have our battles to fight, even before we get to the conflicts necessary to the gig. Thanks for normalizing that fact with your openness and honesty. Excellent essay. Cheers to our “moms.”
Yeah, the phone is a problem. Back when we had a landline, too, I would often leave mine in another room entirely when I work because most people who would try to call would try the landline first. Now my cell phone is the only way to reach me and my kids both have cars and jobs and I always worry there will be some emergency and they won’t be able to reach me. I’m okay at staying off social media when there’s not a lot going on in the news, but lately it is way too easy to check for updates and then start doom-scrolling.
I am so aware of my ‘faults’ and foibles and etc etc and I know my strengths, but sometimes when someone says something positive, a positive trait, about me, I think “dang! really?” and I want to make that part of me better. Sometimes strengths can become Musts – so I try to temper my Strengths so they don’t become Musts. Not even sure that makes sense. ha.
Thank you for the essay and I am going to refer to this again!
It makes perfect sense, actually. If someone finds me funny and says so I will find I start actually trying to make them laugh and wonder what I did/said wrong if I don’t get the intended result. Thanks for commenting!
Kim, I love this post so much, for the exercise and its clear value in self-reflection, and for the built-in kindness and positivity of its approach. What a great suggestion. I’ll be sharing
Thank you so much, Tiffany!
I was in a leadership training program in 2005 and we had to write a “manifesto” to ourselves (or some such thing — I don’t recall what it was called). But in mine, among other things, I wrote “I will write a book before I die.” A year later, I retired, and I have been writing books ever since. I’ve now published seven novels, and I’m editing my 8th.
Declarations to ourselves have power.
They absolutely do! Thank you for commenting!
A Letter to Teacher who happens to be me. What a clever concept! Thanks for this powerful Monday learning!
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to prepare for school starting next week…
Next WEEK? Wow, that is early! Ours doesn’t start until mid August, and I thought that was early.
To your list of strengths, I’d add profound self-awareness and self-effacing humor.
I journal most every day and reflect on what went well in the previous 24 hours (5 things I’m proud of) and what I’d like to improve in the next 24 (1-2 goals, at most.) My inner mom is keen on a rapid feedback loop.
Thank you for the compliments. Viewing my challenges as an outsider makes them seem particularly funny. I’m not sure what it would actually do for me to have a formal diagnosis. I’m sure menopause and being the mom of two daughters trapped in Texistan is not helping my focus issues. Seeing proof that it went back that far was a shock and made me think about earlier stuff. I was definitely a dreamer, never had to work for good grades but made sloppy mistakes on things that did not hold my interest, had a skewed (negative) perception of what others thought of me, and had a tendency to hyperfocus. It’s great when that’s directed toward writing – I once wrote a whole novel in three months. Wish I could get that back at will.
Awareness is probably forty percent of a solution.
Hi Kim:
I have long benefited from something a woman friend told me years ago: “You do not know yourself by yourself.” I think of this in two ways. One, we all possess blind spots concerning our own behavior, and others may see that oblivious behavior better than we do ourselves, particularly those closest to us. Second, we discover our truer selves in how we treat and react to others, especially in moments of stress.
But your exercise opens a door to something else entirely: the secret self, the one we show no one, conceal at all costs, perhaps out of shame or guilt or fear. And to bring that secret self out of the shadows can be empowering — and an object lesson on how to think of our characters. I’ve long thought secrets are an especially useful way to flesh out a character — instantly, there’s an inside and an outside, something revealed and something concealed, which immediately conjures depth. I can’t help but see your exercise as an opportunity to address and own one’s secrets, the better to apply that method to our characters.
Last, I remember my former editor, Mark Tavani, telling writers to write toward their strengths and not worry overly much about their weaknesses — no writer is brilliant at everything. I think your exercise, but recognizing and embracing one’s strengths, would be invaluable in that regard.
Hi David – I actually wrote this year’s ‘letter’ before going back and looking at what I wrote before. I was shocked to see that what I thought was a newer (probably hormone induced) problem was just as apparent in 2010 as it is now. Apparently my dad suspects that he has undiagnosed ADHD. Didn’t know that until recently, and we do share some of the same traits that are consistent with that. I was never disruptive or hyperactive as a kid, but many girls don’t present that way.
I agree about characters and secrets.
Kim, as I read “your mom’s letter,” my first actual thought was what will her mom say about her wanting friends–because this person Kim seems like someone I’d want to know on so many levels. Thank you for sharing such an insightful and fun process, as well as so much of yourself!
Hi Susan – She would say Kim desperately wants friends, and has always struggled to find people who “get her.” Kim has been trapped in Texas since 1997 and and this makes things exponentially worse. She is terrified of guns, has no interest in finding a church home, and her state now considers her and her daughters incubators and second class citizens.
If you live somewhere safer, can I visit? Kidding, not kidding…
Kim, agree with what others have said so won’t repeat, but re: ADD/ADHD — yes, yup, sure sounds like it. re: concerns about treatment (whether meds or anything else) — the guideline is if symptoms interfere with functioning in daily life, time to talk to medical professional — preferably one who has experience with *adult* ADHD, and better yet, one who has experience with *adult females with ADHD* (it makes a world of difference). If that’s not an option, general practitioner plus therapist experienced with ADHD. Also to note: my ADHD stuff was manageable (mostly) until I hit menopause; from then on and after, my symptoms were {ahem} more challenging. A lot more challenging. Meds management (aka evil insurance companies) can also be crazy-making (contact me directly if you want more details). There are also wonderful benefits to ADHD, most of which are still there even when on meds (assuming dosage and type of med are appropriate). And last but definitely not least, there are some excellent online resources and books with good info. Which I can probably find if you need me to, but I am not so good with where I stashed the details {wry grin}. Also also: the BEST decision I made for my business was to hire a freelance bookkeeper. It’s not that I’m bad a math (I’m reasonably decent at it); it’s that bookkeeping and similar tasks are boring and take me forever to do and make my brain hurt. Took me a while, but I finally learned (and am continually reminded) that the way my brain works is fine and not wrong; and the tools/skills/etc. I need to accomplish what I want to accomplish are just fine, too.
Oh, Judy, we need to talk! I’m one of the administrators/assistant editors here at WU, and so I can easily access your e-mail address without asking you to give it out here. Yes, everything was mostly manageable until I hit menopause and now I am really floundering. I’ll be in touch soon.
Lovely – happy to chat/email/whatever — send me an email and we’ll figure out when and how :)
This was both adorable and instructive. Not quite as fun and cute, but in mid 2020, I did an adapted version of a business exercise shared with me by a friend in the corporate world, outlining my vision for myself for that year. Naturally I could not have anticipated just how (nor how long) the pandemic would twist everything up, but the exercise itself was a wonderful way to set goals and put forth optimism, much like your letter here. I have repeated this exercise a couple times since, and I hope to continue doing it (and maybe eventually fulfilling it, lol) in the future.
Kristan, that also sounds like a very useful exercise! Thank you for commenting!
Kim. Thanks so much for this post. It resonated with me because my colleague and I asked our students to write a memo stating what midterm grade they wished to receive and why. When we read these memos, we both agreed that we learned of some of the hidden challenges some students faced. We had no idea. This was a real eye opener. As a professor I realized that each student is unique with special gifts and challenges. I will try this exercise. I hope you and your family are well.