Fear as a fractal pattern
A framework to overcome things that scare you
What the eff are these engineers talking about? Is this even English?
I was sitting in a meeting room listening to a bunch of engineers argue about technical aspects of a project we were working on. I had no idea what they were saying. The conversation moved very quickly.
I tried to focus. How many words per sentence can I actually understand? I wondered. This question became a pathetic game; I could only understand about every fourth word. After a few tries, I stopped because I felt like a moron.
How did I even get hired for this job?
My anxiety level rose with the pace of the incomprehensible meeting. I wished I could understand what these people were talking about. Yet I said nothing because everyone else seemed to get it.
Desperate for a distraction, I glanced at the clock and noticed we were at the top of the hour. The meeting was finally over. Thank God.
One of the engineers stood up and said, “That sounds great. I’ll add these diagrams to the wiki.” Others nodded. I nodded too. But the awful truth was that I didn’t even know what I just agreed to.
As I got up from my seat, I felt the weight of this project on my shoulders. I was afraid and I didn’t even know why. I pushed these feelings to some dark place in my mind. As I trudged along to my next meeting, I tried to forget any of this ever happened.
Failure is celebrated, but we’re scared of it
In startup culture, failure is encouraged and celebrated. We hear the mantra “fail early, fail often.” We’re told that failure is a rite of passage — an opportunity to learn and grow.
Despite this, we’re still scared of failing. Every single one of us. But we pretend we’re not. We tell people how great we’re doing and post pictures of ourselves “totally killing it!!!”
It’s doubtful that these charades reflect how we really feel. Let’s be honest: we project how we’d like to feel. Many people who work at startups more honestly describe their day-to-day experience as being in a constant state of anxiety and fear, peppered with rare moments of celebration. These feelings are not specific to company co-founders; it’s everybody, whether they admit it or not.
Why are we so scared when failure is supposed to be a good thing?
What really happened in that meeting
During the meeting, the engineers spoke about the technical details of a new feature that our team was working on. There was some uncertainty about how to build it. Although I’m not an engineer, I am a product manager. I’m responsible for the features that my team creates, where technology and design both come into play. However, I zoned out during this meeting because I didn’t understand what the engineers were saying. I was scared to ask questions because I didn’t want them to think I was dumb.
Instead, I said nothing and I asked nothing even though I had questions. Lots of them. I just zoned out. Because I was afraid of looking stupid in front of my peers, my brain sent me in the opposite direction of the fear.
Fear messes with our brains in more ways than we realize. In fact, it can cause us to do things that make us more likely to fail in the first place. Empirical studies like this one have shown that when we fear something, it’s much harder for us to rationally process thoughts and events. Our brains want to protect us by sending us in the opposite direction of the thing we’re scared of.
This process was helpful back in the day when we feared wild animals, but it’s useless in a professional context. The worst part is that we’re often unaware that this is happening. Instead, we just avoid the scary thing and call it a day. How sad is that? It’s like someone else controls our brains when we’re scared and we don’t even know it.
At work, fear inhibits our performance, as well as our relationships with our colleagues and managers. It prevents learning and growth.
What are we really scared of?
When we experience fear, especially at work, we tend to think there’s something wrong with us. Being afraid is part of being a human whether it’s at work or elsewhere. According to one study, 40% of respondents reported excessive anxiety in their daily lives. Looking at different articles citing common workplace fears, I learned that we’re actually scared of a lot more than just failing and that these fears can be grouped into categories. It also occurred to me that our workplace fears can be grouped into four categories:
- Fears that relate to the individual: not being smart enough, being unqualified, facing feelings of shame, embarrassment, and guilt.
- Fears that relate to your team: not fitting in, being singled out, found out, rejected, or isolated.
- Fears that relate to your organization: losing your job, falling short of expectations, or settling for your current job.
- Fears that relate to your career: fear of being stagnant
How to deal with fear at work
We’re all scared of something at work. Whether we realize it or not, the things that scare us prevent us from being successful.
If startups are a collection of people pretending to have their shit together, but we are all totally scared on the inside, then we are all going nowhere.
No wonder so many startups fail. There’s been a lot written about impostor syndrome. This term is not only overused, but there is little practical advice on how to deal with it other than acknowledging that everyone feels this way.
The anecdote I shared with you about my meeting with the engineers is an example of me acting irrationally due to fear. But shortly after that meeting, I realized I couldn’t go on like that. As a product manager in the technology industry, it’s essential that I actively participate in such conversations. Working through technical challenges with your engineering team is an important part of the job.
In my case, I needed a way to deal with this fear of looking stupid in technical conversations. To do so, I had to develop a rational way to think about this fear.
My fear fractal framework
As product managers, we often love to use frameworks and established methodologies to solve problems. Here’s a framework that I found helpful to think about and deal with my fears: fractals.
A fractal is a pattern that repeats itself at different scales. A common example of a fractal is a tree that has branches. If you cut off a branch from a tree, the branch would look (somewhat) like the original tree. If you then snapped a twig from the branch, that twig would also look like the branch and the original tree. In other words, the tree form continues whether you zoom in or out of the tree itself.
Fractals not only exist in nature, they can also be found in math and finance. They appear to be the basis of how complex patterns of information are organized throughout the universe.
Fractals are everywhere and are totally natural. So is fear. Fractals are a helpful way to organize your thoughts and feelings about the things that scare you so that you can deal with fear productively.
The next time you feel stressed at work, ask yourself why and write the explanation down. Add as much detail as possible. Get it all on paper. Continuously ask yourself, “Why do I feel this way?” In doing so, you might notice that the things that scare you follow a fractal pattern.
To illustrate, I’ll map out my own fear fractal from the story above using the fear categories that I’ve outlined above (i.e., individual, team, organization, career).
Sit tight while I expose my workplace fears on the Internet. No big deal.
- Example: Anxiety and fear in technical meetings. Hatred of technical meetings. I don’t want to go to them. I want to get someone else to deal with this. I want to pull the fire bell in the building to avoid these conversations. I want the engineering lead to deal with this sh*t so I can focus on other things…
Now, continuously ask yourself why you feel this way and document your analysis using the fear categories:
- Fears about myself as an individual: I don’t think I’m smart enough to do my job effectively. Definitely not smart enough to understand complex technical concepts.
- Fears about my team: I’m scared that one day the people I work with will realize that I am incompetent and point this out in a technical meeting where I will be publicly humiliated. This is why I say nothing during technical conversations when I don’t understand something.
- Fears about my organization: Given that I don’t understand seemingly basic technical concepts that others seem to get, I’m scared that something will go wrong when my team attempts to release that new feature discussed in the meeting. As a result of my incompetence, something will go wrong with the launch of that new feature and my organization will suffer in some dramatic way. Perhaps I overlooked an important technical detail that resulted in a bad user experience causing customer dissatisfaction thereby tarnishing the company’s reputation.
- Fears about my career: Again, because of my general incompetence at doing my job, my career will suffer in the long run. I’m scared that I will be overlooked for promotions or opportunities to grow. I might even get fired and struggle to find meaningful work as a result.
What can we learn from observing fear fractal patterns?
Fractals are infinite patterns, so are our fears. We can drive ourselves crazy ruminating over the never-ending number of things that scare us. Once you understand what your fear is and how it manifests at different scales (individual, team, organization, and career), you can use it to motivate you to take action and overcome it.
In my case, it makes sense for me to focus on the fear fractal at the individual level. Even though one of my fears is that I am not smart enough to do my job, it’s not healthy for me to focus on how low my IQ might be because there’s not much I can change about that. Instead, I can focus on things that I can control, such as my technical knowledge. Armed with more technical knowledge, I can build up the courage to ask a question in a technical meeting. There’s no sense in focusing on whether my organization will be successful or if my career is taking a turn for the worst. What can I do about those things? Nothing. Instead, I can focus my energy on things that I can control.
It’s worth noting that a fractal pattern isn’t a perfect analogy for looking at fear. With traditional fractal patterns, such as those found in plants and snowflakes, the exact same pattern is repeated at different levels of magnification. One’s fear patterns are not identical at different levels of magnification. Each fear is similar, but not identical, to the others. Still, fractal patterns are a practical way at evaluating your fears in an objective way. Fear fractal patterns can help you identify where you can take action to move past the fear.
To re-cap, here’s the process that I recommend to address your workplace fears:
- Document your raw feelings and emotions.
- Organize and document your fears as a fractal pattern.
- Identify the areas of your fear fractal that you can control and take action to address them.
Of course, this idea of taking action to address your fears is easier said than done. You will likely have to try different things for step 3. In my case, I read books about technical concepts and Googled just about every single acronym uttered by the engineers. After all that, I was still afraid to ask a question in technical meetings.
No matter what your fear fractal looks like, step 3 will likely involve asking others for help; in other words, showing some vulnerability. Renowned psychologist Brené Brown defines vulnerability as the “willingness to show up and be seen despite uncertain outcomes.” This idea of putting yourself out there when scared of something seems counterintuitive, particularly in startup culture where we all pretend to have our shit together. Surprisingly, Brown’s work demonstrates that showing vulnerability at work is one of the most powerful ways to overcome fear.
Showing vulnerability to overcome our fears
If we want to succeed at work, vulnerability is key. People are often scared of the same things. Therefore, by being more open about fear, you’re opening yourself up to the possibility that others can help you.
Going back to the story about the meeting with the engineers, instead of staying silent the whole time, let’s say I showed some vulnerability by admitting to the engineers that I wasn’t following. In doing so, I would be exposing a small part of the fear fractal that relates to me as an individual (“I don’t think I’m smart enough to do my job effectively. Definitely not smart enough to understand complex technical concepts.”) There’s no point in exposing the entire “individual level” fear fractal because no one can actually solve it. No one can help me think that I’m actually smart, I need to think that on my own.
Let’s pretend I asked a question in the meeting. The conversation could have gone something like this:
- Me: Guys, I’m the lone product manager in a roomful of engineers, I’m not really following! Can we revisit that point to make sure I understand?
- Engineer: Don’t worry about it , Lindsay. I’m totally lost in those product meetings with all the business buzzwords. Let’s recap the points we’ve just made to ensure we’re all on the same page.
In this case, admitting to the engineers in the meeting would have them in a position to help me. Also, maybe I would have struck a chord in one of the engineers who decided to share a similar insecurity.
Instead of trying to address my fears on my own, showing some vulnerability could have helped me understand what was happening in the meeting. Let’s pretend that after the meeting, I asked that engineer if he could help me improve my understanding of the company’s technical architecture as it relates to the feature we were building. Both of those actions can go a long way.
Not everyone needs to “face their fears” in a dramatic, dragon-slaying kind of way. By mapping out my fears and seeing them as a fractal pattern, I’ve been able to objectively look at them and take action. This process did not happen overnight. I’ve devoted years of my career to improving my technical skills and showing vulnerability. By proving to myself that I’m capable of grasping technical concepts and applying them to decisions, I no longer feel idiotic at work and can do a better job being a product manager. In fact, I am now an active participant in technical conversations. I regularly ask “idiotic” questions in such meetings because I know that there are others in the room who are too scared to ask.
Through this journey I’ve also come to realize that people who are actually quite smart have the propensity to feel stupid. We’re all insecure about something at work. I hope that mapping out your fears as a fractal pattern can help you like it helped me.
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