Just

The strawberries taste like strawberries. The snozberries taste like snozberries. This is the Music Makers podcast where I read things out loud to you and then offer my unqualified opinions on them. Jest by Brad Frost. I feel like an idiot while doing my job a lot.

Now there's a damn good chance I am actually an idiot, but the self respecting part of me wants to challenge that notion. When I get stuck on a task or I'm looking for recommendations for tools, resources, strategies, solutions, or whatever, often take to Twitter to ask for help. Seconds after posting my quandary, my stream gets flooded with a host of advice, links, insights, and opinions. This crowdsourcing my knowledge sphere is a wonderful thing. But one word and all those proffered solutions tends to stick out of my mind like a jagged, rusty nail, ready to figuratively jam itself into my eye socket.

Quote, just dot dot dot, as in just update your RubyGems, generate a new SSH key, and run a git rebase. Just clone the dev branch, add those 3 Grunt tasks, and recompile. Just use this software, platform, toolkit, or methodology. Just makes me feel like an idiot. Just presumes I came from a specific background, studied certain courses in university, influenced in certain technologies, and have read all the right books, articles, and resources.

Just is a dangerous word. We approach problems equipped with our own set of experiences, perspectives, and skills. It's extremely challenging to step outside of our own perspective when communicating with others, but it's increasingly essential to do so. The amount of knowledge available in our field, or any field, really, is growing larger, more complex, and more segmented all the time. That everyone has downloaded the same fundamental knowledge on any topic is becoming less and less probable.

Because of this, we have to be careful not to make too many assumptions in our documentation, blog posts, tutorials, wikis, and communications. Imagine yourself explaining a particular task to an earlier version of yourself. Once upon a time, you didn't know what you know now. Provide context. The beauty of hypertext is that we're able to quickly add much needed context, helpful for noobs, but easy enough for those already in the know to scan over.

And making documentation more human readable benefits everyone. I don't envy those just entering the field of web development. In addition to learning fundamentals, there's an expectation to be proficient in an increasingly exhausting laundry list of buzzwords and technologies. I'm 7 years into my career and still feel like I'm on chapter 1 of the big book of web design. So think twice before suggesting someone just insert any task here.

You might make them feel like an idiot. Not too long ago, we looked at an article called Be Kind, and the core nugget of that article was being right, unfortunately, isn't enough. You have to take other people into consideration. You have to actually be kind. If you're right all the time, but you're also rude all the time, it doesn't matter.

You're going to lose. People aren't going to want to work with you. It doesn't matter how right you are if you make people feel stupid all the time. This article here is a great way to try to put some of that kindness into action. One of the things that you can do to try to be kind is to eliminate this word just when you're answering somebody's question.

The word just makes this presupposition about the person's knowledge, that they know the thing you're about to say, they just didn't think of it themselves. When one of your coworkers or even somebody that works for you comes to you with a spreadsheet question and let's face it. Who doesn't have spreadsheet questions? That's basically what all office workers do nowadays, work with spreadsheets. When they come to you with a spreadsheet question and your immediate answer is, hey.

Just use a pivot table. How do you think they're gonna feel if they don't know what a pivot table is? Do you think they're gonna be really excited about asking you what a pivot table is? Do you think they're gonna feel like that's a safe question to ask? What's a pivot table?

When you told them, just use a pivot table as if everyone in the world knows what a pivot table is. No. They're not gonna wanna ask you that because you said, just do that, which makes it sound like everyone knows to use pivot tables. I can't believe you didn't know that. It's gonna be super hard for them to turn around and say, oh, great.

I will just do that. Can you tell me what that even means? There's a great webcomic called xkcd, and he draws these great stick figures and graphs, and they're actually pretty hysterical. One of their comics is called 10,000. And the art isn't important here, so I'll just read it for you.

The first panel says, I try not to make fun of people for admitting they don't know things. Because for each thing that, quote, everyone knows, by the time they're adults, every day there are, on average, 10,000 people in the US hearing about it for the first time. If you say that 0% of people have heard about it at birth, which makes sense, and we'll say 100% of people have heard about it by the age of 30 and the US birth rate is 4,000,000 a year, then the number of people hearing about it for the first time is 10,000 people per day. So if everyone hears about it by age 30, then on average, 10,000 people per day are hearing about this thing that everyone knows. The second panel says this.

If I make fun of people, I train them not to tell me when they have these moments, and I miss out on the fun. And then there are these 2 stick figures talking. The first person says Diet Coke and Mentos? What's that? 2nd person responds, oh, man.

Come on. We're going to the grocery store. First person says, why? The second person says, you're one of today's lucky 10000. Everyone learned something for the first time.

You didn't always know what pivot tables were. And if you can think back to those carefree and wonderful days before you knew what a pivot table was, if somebody said the words pivot table to you, you would be very confused and quite possibly very bored. Try to keep that in mind when somebody who has less experience asks you for help or when somebody that works in a different field asks you for help in your specific field. There's a huge difference in just use a pivot table and try using a pivot table. 1 is not more straightforward than the other, but one is more kind than the other.

Just can make people feel stupid. And there was a day when you were one of the lucky 10,000, and you got to learn. Today may be their day, and you may get to teach them. The Music Makers is released every Monday at 9 AM CST. You can find show notes online at musicmakers.fm, or please send me an email and tell me what you think.

Aaron@musicmakers.fm. I would love to hear from you.