Self-Aggrandizement: tell me more

As I've blogged about quite a bit in the past, for just over the last year of my life, I've been having a go at Radical Honesty - at telling the truth, the whole truth, all the time, even if I think it isn't politically expedient.

Which, frankly, has been really hard. But, like most hard things, has also been undoubtedly worth the work.

I was thinking about Radical Honesty a lot today, after stumbling across the details of one of Stanley Milgram's social psych experiments. In short, the experiment involved a team of researchers heading onto partially full New York subways, and asking seated riders to give up their seats. The results themselves are moderately interesting indications of the power of social compliance - about 70% of those asked gave their seats. But far more interesting to me are the qualitative descriptions of the experimenters' own feelings during the experiment; most reported feeling becoming uncomfortable when asking for the seat, often having to ride six or seven stops to work up the nerve.

Which, in a nutshell, is what the Radical Honesty experiment has been like for me so far. By and large, the results of telling the truth as much as possible are far, far better than I'd have expected. The hard part is actually making myself do it.

One area, for example, where I keep having to remind myself of this is in keeping investors, colleagues and collaborators posted on progress. Like in any situation, my instinct is to play up the positive, and omit the rest. Which causes problems when progress slows; waiting for something good to report, I hold off on calling or emailing with updates. And, during the ensuing silence, people tend to assume the worst. In literally every single case, I've found that simply sending along a 'things are stalled out and here's why' email leaves people not upset about the stall but rather extremely happy to simply be in the loop.

Like any new habit - even any new habit you know is far better for you than what you've previously done - it still feels unnatural, still takes a lot of work. I'm hoping, at some point, if I can reliably keep up Radical Honesty long enough, that eventually it will all be second nature. But, until then, in my work and personal life, I'm happy to slog ahead, one effortful, consciously monitored day at a time.

tell me more Filed Tuesday, February 8 2005.

tell me more
Filed Tuesday, February 8 2005.