I'm rereading "Getting Things Done" by David Allen and implementing the book's suggestions at my new job. I've got a DayRunner that Heather gave to me years ago that I never used and I refilled it and I've been using it to help me track my tasks and get myself to complete. It's been good so far, and I have seen a spike in my productivity and vast decline in my general level of angst...but one thing occured to me yesterday.
In addition to doing "Getting Things Done" I'm also doing the "Artist's Way" and one of the things that's important in that process is the morning pages, which is a time when you sit down for 30 minutes as soon as you wake up and just write free-form stream-of-consciousness so that all of the scum floating on top of your brain gets skimmed and left behind. The idea is the same as Getting Things Done: when you've cleared these little nagging issues and problems from your head you're more able to focus on the big and important stuff (not exactly revolutionary, but important to address all the same).
As I was writing out my morning pages yesterday I came to the realization that a large part of my anxiety surrounding work had nothing to do so much with the complexity of the work or the deadlines so much as it was that I am suffering from a profound doubt about my ability to architect a software solution around a problem, so much so, that I often end up procrastinating on building anything until it's (almost) too late and then I try to hack something out.
I know in my head that I have the skills and knowledge to be a good architect, but somehow I lack the emotional fortitude to believe it. That's huge, and I've never openly acknowledged it until now.
So I think that that has been a contributing factor to all of my stress and worry and job churn that I've gone through in the past. I'm happy though, because naming it means I can tackle it and fix it.
I think this is a huge step for me.
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