reputation as thoreau’s butterfly

“Happiness is like a butterfly, the more you chase it, the more it will evade you, but if you notice the other things around you, it will gently come and sit on your shoulder.” -Henry David Thoreau

I would argue that a good reputation among your teammates is like this, too. Trying to look good all too often means looking fake. Trying to control or influence how people think of you may get you some early “wins” in the personal PR department. But people pretty quickly figure out that you are running a personal PR department. And then you have a much harder job because people see that you have assigned yourself and pay attention to two jobs - 1) doing your job and 2) influencing the way people see you doing your job. People bring much harsher judgment and less generosity to their evaluation of your second job - the PR-y, political, influencing job - and their judgment of your performance as a personal salesperson will color their judgment of your performance in the other job (the “real job”, the one you were hired to do).

Save yourself time, energy, neurons. Hustle, share credit, own mistakes. Practice willful ignorance about what people might be thinking of you. Eventually, this makes you look good…because you are good. You are competent and virtuous. You have left the gymnastic vanities to the amateurs. They twist while you fly.

-Eric