7 Deadly Fears I Have Faced — Part 2 — A Data Analyst Journal

I am glad to have you for the second part of my career journal.

• #1: 7 Deadly Fears I Have Faced - Part 1
• #2: 7 Deadly Fears I Have Faced - Part 2 <– You are here
• #3: 7 Deadly Fears I Have Faced - Part 3

They Don’t Know Sh*t About My Great Artwork - The Pride

The Fear Of Becoming Arrogant

Rather than being tormented by the Fear of Not Being Valued in my early career, I gradually learned the art of tempering the discomfort upon receiving criticism and grew indifferent to others’ opinions. Instead, I shifted my focus towards bridging the gap in knowledge and skills, and extracting lessons from each completed task. I bet that some colleagues might perceive my attitude as an expression of arrogance; however, the truth is quite the opposite.

As a junior, I consistently found myself alone in challenging situations, like fulfilling the analytics and reporting workload of the entire marketing team - equivalent to 7-12 requests weekly - including investigating business problems and conducting weekly/monthly business reviews. In another instance, I partnered with a data engineer on an infrastructure project aiming to address the demand for self-service analytics. In all cases, I was granted the freedom to prioritize my workloads to complete as many tickets as possible. Consequently, my reliance on managerial support decreased as I became more efficient in task and time management. Throughout, the frequency of seeking senior counsel or posing naive questions declined steadily. Although the amount of feedback I received did not decrease as I took on different scopes and projects, I refined critical thinking, heeded selectively constructive criticism. Ultimately, I was able to engage my manager more intensely with my perspectives, and…disregard guidance under certain circumstances. I appeared to have matured into independent problem-solver and I sometimes felt my co-workers could not understand the greatness in my works. However, this marked the onset of a critical blow to my self-confidence in my career.

With growing trust, I was assigned more complex, higher-impact, long-term projects. Unfortunately, my experience and knowledge lagged behind my expanding responsibilities. On one occasion, I was tasked with constructing a new executive-level comprehensive business report format with eight intricate spreadsheet pages, featuring tables with roughly five hundred rows displaying a wide range of business and user metrics. The director oversaw my two-week deliverable, as I confidently claimed needing little support. But frustration had landed as only 30% of the task was completed after a week. It happened that this was an laborious undertaking due to the multitude of diverse metrics that could not be easily replicated from one to another. Furthermore, towards the end of the first week, I was burdened with an additional ad-hoc task. Understandably, the C-level executive erupted in anger at the delayed report, prompting me to spend subsequent nights completing the task.

Realizing I had fallen victim to the Dunning-Kruger effect, I feared recurring arrogance for months. I found it difficult to experience genuine satisfaction upon achieving success, constantly apprehensive about making the same mistake again.

The Slope Of Enlightenment

Well, some ships sink after the storm, while others weather it. The survivors may return to safe harbor, but not for long. As they repaired shattered hulls, they soon quest again for the open sea. As for myself, I refused to be vanquished after one life’s tempest. While fear haunted me, I compelled myself to embrace the hard-learned lessons - the technical skills and time management experience I had acquired. In the wake of that harrowing ordeal, I began to estimate the available time resources at my disposal whenever receiving a request. Moreover, I sought out resource planning frameworks and continually tested various task and time management techniques in my weekly routine. I experimented with different methods such as Eisenhower’s Matrix, Agile, Pomodoro, SMART goals, and more. I also crafted request templates, recorded productivity units and time costs, reviewed weekly plans, and tracked incidents. Ultimately, I devised a handbook for workload planning and management, simplified as follows:

• Step 1: Identify achievable deliverables for the week fitting available resources.
• Step 2: Breakdown the goals into actionable tasks defined by measurable dimensions like impact, effort, difficulty, scope, stakeholder interests and risks.
• Step 3: Prioritize and identify key weekly focuses, then sorting tasks by Eisenhower Matrix and Stakeholder Interest/Power Matrix.
• Step 4: Arrange the job to be done, the meeting, and the planning blocks on the calendar.

Having such a detailed handbook eased my anxiety and restored my self-confidence after only a few weeks of practicing this new approach. In addition, I realized that I had obtained valuable lessons after that incident.

• 1. Accept the ugly truth: I recognized that everyone is susceptible to the Dunning-Kruger effect; I was not the only one suffer such a situation. Overconfidence is common when embarking on something new.
• 2. Self-reflection: I developed the habit of reflecting honestly on my abilities after finishing tasks. I also avoided simply feeling pride or relief at completion. When things do not go as planned, I take time to reflect on what went wrong and what you can do differently in the future.
• 3. Seek feedback: I endeavored to ask for feedback from others, especially from those who were more experienced than myself in the team. I learnt that I should be open to constructive & valid criticism and use it to improve my competence.
• 4. Stay curious and humble: The more I learn, the more I realize how much I do know nothing. I know that excellence comes from lifelong learning, thus I try to be open to different perspectives and ideas.
• 5. Focus on progress, not perfection: Of course, mastery cannot be achieved instantaneously. Sustainable growth comes from steady small wins over time; therefore, I practice compare myself to my past self rather than others.
• 6. Practice self-care: I also understand that perfectionism often stems from fear. Hence, I make time to unwind and gain proper rest and perspective after a certain achievements.