10 signs of a Conviction Recession
Conviction is contagious. So is a lack of it.
Most of us believe in what we’re doing—or we wouldn’t be doing it. We’re committed, or so we claim, to our growth, hard work, our partners, our careers, that novel we’ve been working on for the last five years…
… so why aren’t we there yet? There are excuses, of course (no time, macroeconomic recession); there are facts (publishing has no money, companies are laying people off, and agencies that actually care about diversity are shutting down); and if you’re into self-help, there are probably several things you need to work on personally that are holding you back.
But most people don’t recognize when there’s a widespread crisis of conviction. You may just witness this crisis, or you may be actively or passively contributing to it. Here are some of its symptoms, both in a corporate environment and in the creative life:
A culture of “No” masquerading as intellectual rigor
A lack of ideas, or writer’s block; endless brainstorm sessions that somehow never go anywhere.
When you have ideas, you doubt them; surely someone else already tried it. Why would this succeed when so many like it did not?
When you bring ideas to others, you get constant critique, questioning and nitpicking, instead of people helping you build on what’s working.
Fixating on the approach, rather than the outcome
You spend all your time on process: deciding on how to have time for writing, how to structure your team, roles and responsibilities, etc. instead of actually getting work done or even talking about what the work is.
Endless strategy sessions, meetings, or spreadsheets with RACI charts and plans. Endless plot synopses and revisions.
Focusing on the mechanics of the publishing industry before you’ve even written your novel.
Excessive leader-dependence
You want signoff from an executive before you’ll start work, so you don’t get thrashed later; you want some agent or publisher to tell you that your WIP novel idea is worthwhile.
When a leader leaves, you question whether the work is still worth doing; you dread what the new leader is going to say; or, you decide that the best way to deal with the revolving door of leadership changes is to do nothing at all.
You do things that don’t feel right to you because someone in authority asked for it; e.g. the prologue / no-prologue debate, you respond with urgency to an exec request that makes no sense, etc.
Lack of agency, combined with critique of any display of agency
Sour grapes: You keep getting rejected on a literary novel, but condemn someone who switches to a more commercial genre or who chooses to self-publish. You can’t convince that other person / team to do what you want, so you point out how everything they do turns to dust eventually.
You don’t want to be the first to do it; but if others are on board, you are too.
You refuse help or offers of compromise, because it will mean you’ve failed. e.g. you can’t get the role you want, so you bite the hand that offers you something close enough, or complain that it’s a step down instead of making the best of it as a stepping stone.
Analysis Paralysis: Demanding more data before you can make a decision
You keep asking for feedback on the same opening chapters because you’re stuck in the middle. You keep asking for input from someone more senior, even when you know what the right answer is.
You do endless analysis on a topic and share all the “insights” but none of these are actually actionable; they’re just interesting. You endlessly research things related to your novel’s era or setting, without writing the book.
As a leader, you keep sending your team back to do more research and bring back more details at the next review (instead of sunsetting the product). As a writer, you keep editing your story instead of actually submitting it.
Listening too much to the Person with the Answer in the Pulpit
Conviction is especially contagious when nobody else has it. Then, it’s easy for a person to stand on the soapbox and say, “I know the answer! Take my course, use this tried and tested process to fix your plot / marketing / leadership style.” They become the one-eyed man in the valley of the blind.
Similarly, a person in the pulpit can be a nihilist, shouting “Everything is broken! Don’t trust that team, they’re trash! Don’t throw your money away on false prophets! All those courses are just scams!” and we’d like to listen to them too, to avoid doing work.
Sometimes the person in the pulpit isn’t even aware their whisper is a shout. When a senior or more experienced person sits in a room full of amateurs and says, even offhand, “Yeah, I tried that and it didn’t work for me,” it deflates the conviction of everyone in the room.
Refusing the wisdom of the crowd
The mirror to the previous symptom: it’s sometimes tempting to dig your heels in when everyone is telling you something you don’t want to hear, especially if you have in-built biases about whether or not the crowd has credibility. e.g. “They’re not published, so their critique of my story isn’t valid.” or “They’re not as technical as me, so they can’t judge my performance well.”
Cynicism about crowd-sourced or community solutions. e.g. “This solution won’t work unless you can get everyone on the team to follow the same process—good luck with that,” or “We shouldn’t centralize X because it’ll be run like the government,” etc.
Wanting a new army, rather than the one you have: e.g. “I would be much more successful if I had a bigger publisher” or “What do users / readers know?” or “The team I have is too junior,” etc.
Fearing the pitchforks of the proletariat
You don’t write the book you want to write because you’re afraid of what your friends and family might say when they read it. Or, you don’t write Book 2 because Book 1 sometimes got one-star reviews on Goodreads.
You feel punished for making progress. Any time you suggest a change, everyone finds reasons it’s a bad idea, or not going to work, or they drag their heels, and you either start to wonder if it’s worth it or actively fear repercussions—what if they complain to your boss? What if they drag you on the internet? (incidentally a plot point in my next novel)
You focus more on messaging the work than on the actual work: you think about how various audiences will receive it, who might freak out or not freak out, how to pitch it effectively… meanwhile, is the work / novel actually making progress?
Aggression and bluster: Fake it till you make it
First of all, nobody who actually exudes masculine energy feels the need to say it. Recognizing projection should be a basic life-skill: often, when people claim that X is the most critical thing, it’s because they lack it.
Hype, or unfounded conviction, is actually a symptom of a lack of conviction.
When questioned on their convictions, do leaders engage with humility and patience to explain why they believe the things they do? Or do they just get defensive or claim “because I say so and I’m in charge”? When you’re asked why you killed that character or wrote the novel from that POV, do you actually have an answer or do you start to feel the drip of dread?
A focus on exploratory actions
Reaching for low-hanging fruit: “Instead of writing the novel I wanted to write, I’m going to try short stories, or children’s books.” Or maybe, “The thing we actually want to build will take years. Let’s do this hack instead.”
Let’s run some pilots, do some user research, create some community focus groups, read some other novels in the genre, etc.
What’s needed is skill-building, regardless of what we do with those skills. I’m going to take some courses, run a workshop, and work on self-improvement.
If you didn’t believe there was a conviction recession before, I’m sure you do now. TBD if I infected you with my conviction about the conviction recession, or my lack of conviction about something else. (Does your head hurt?)
Anyway, more to come later. My Oura ring is telling me I’ve been sitting too long.
I wonder if Airene and I should have filed a patent when we created The Night Wolves webcomic, where students at a university get a free scholarship as long as they wear these biometric rings so the data can be used for research. Now, I have a ring on my forefinger just like Krish in the scene below, except mine doesn’t glow when I’m stressed. Come on, Oura. Get your act together. Where’s your conviction?
