Friday, October 2

Say nothing when they don't

Taking a compliment plainly is the easy half.

Key takeaways

Finish the job without announcing it in the room
Stop fishing for a response that isn't coming
Let silence sit for a full minute without filling it

TL;DR

Taking a compliment plainly is the easy half. The hard half is when nobody says anything at all and you have to let that be fine.

Let the silence stand

You did the thing. It landed. The room moved on to lunch. And something in your chest starts drafting a way to bring it up casually.

Catch the fishing line

It's rarely a direct ask. It's a mention. You slide it into a sentence about something else. You say you were up late. You reference the problem you solved like it's just context. You leave a pause where the thank you should go.

That's a line in the water. Everyone can feel it, including you. The ask is louder than the work was.

a mug of coffee going cold on a cluttered desk

Photo by Thomas Boulay on Unsplash

Finish and walk away

The job ends when the job ends. Not when it's acknowledged. Tie it off, close the file, go do the next thing. If praise comes later, good, take it plainly. If it never comes, the work still happened and you still know it happened.

People are busy and mostly self-absorbed. Their silence is usually not a verdict. It's traffic.

Stop auditing the room

Watch what you do with your eyes after you finish something. Scanning faces. Checking who noticed. That scan is a habit, and habits weaken when you stop feeding them. Let one job go completely unmentioned by you. See that nothing breaks.

Today

Finish one task well today and tell no one about it, not even sideways.

Go deeper

There's an old line about doing your giving quietly so the left hand doesn't know what the right one did. Strange image, and the point is simple. Some good is meant to go unwitnessed, and that's where it stays clean. Thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly. Matthew 6:4 The reward isn't the point to chase either. What's being built in you is a man who can work without an audience, who doesn't need the room to confirm he exists. That man is steadier than one who does. He can be overlooked without curdling. He can be thanked without inflating. Either way, he keeps working.