Introspection via the “Who am I” document

At any point in time during your career, the bottleneck to your growth and development can be a lack of insight and self-awareness of who you are and what makes you perform the best. Read more to learn about the process of introspection using the “Who am I” document.

Who am I

To start with, this is something I learned while working with my self-awareness mentor. Dear L.C. taught me this great format for introspection, a “living document” that you should be constantly reviewing, getting feedback on and so on. Down below there is an excerpt from my “Who am I” document and how to write it.

How to write it?

You write this document bottom up. Start with your workflow, something that’s easiest to observe. Write down how you wake up, how much you work, when do you eat, who do you hang out with and so on. Whatever is relevant for you.

When you fill out that section, move one section up. Write that one in, using the insight you’ve gained from your previous section. Remember – it’s actually good if it sounds repetitive and obvious. There should be a strong causality and correlation between all sections. Otherwise you might be lying to yourself (not necessarily, but, you could be).

So, Who am I?

Here it is – the outline for this document and some examples of what you could write in for your document.

1. My purpose

This is the top section, the one you will write the very last, after many iterations on your doc. Feel free to keep it empty for some time. The purpose will eventually reveal itself.

To be a super awesome technical leader at solving hard problems, while inspiring people around me.

2. My core beliefs

A core belief is one that’s like a constant in your world. Something you can’t part with so easily. It defines who you are, what else you believe in, what you care about the most, who you want to become and much more. They are not always perfect and healthiest for you, so have compassion for yourself.

Productivity: I have to be productive to feel happy with myself.

Challenge: I have to be challenged to feel like I’m doing something that matters.

Social: I am a social creature and I can’t live without having great social interactions.

3. My leadership values

How do your beliefs and values translate to your work environment? Each great company nowadays has a strong culture and a set of leadership values that you can and do identify with. Find what resonates with you.

Deliver Results: Leaders deliver results in timely fashion.

Dive Deep: Leaders go to the heart of the problem. No task is beneath them.

Learn and be Curious: Leaders are constantly working on improving themselves.

Earn Trust: Leaders treat others respectfully.

4. My strengths

Strengths and weaknesses stem from your previous sections. They are like psychological archetypes – double edged swords, two sides of the same coin.

Fast: My speed of execution is amazing. Once I get an idea of how to solve a challenging problem, there is no stopping me.

Technical knowledge: I have what it takes to solve hard problems and I’m not afraid to learn new things.

Unselfish: I’m always happy to share my knowledge and help others succeed.

5. My weaknesses

Here I write not just what my weaknesses are, but what do I have to do in order to compensate for them.

Rushy: I can sometimes rush too hard to get a problem out of the way, making others around me feel uncomfortable about the associated risks. I have to make sure people have their concerns addressed properly first.

Trust: Since I love problem solving so much, sometimes I can have issues with trusting other people with work – delegation – will they do a good job at it? Therefore, I have to let go more often than I would instinctively, but perhaps offer my help in reviewing the work or mentorship in case they get stuck.

Gullible: I will go out of my way to help others and sometimes that makes me vulnerable to exploitation. I have to ask probing questions to defend from this.

6. My passions

What gives you butterflies? What is that thing you love to do, that others might call just work, but you experience as enjoyment?

Excellence: I’m passionate about being excellent – especially in the software development world and in my hobbies. This makes it possible to be fast and solve challenging problems.

Psychology: My favorite hobby is learning and practicing good mental hygiene.

Learning and teaching: I love learning new things and then sharing my knowledge, especially in areas such as music, psychology, leadership and computer science.

7. My operating principles

Principles stem from values. This is how you prefer to do your job. For example, if you value integrity, your principle might be “Do everything by the law” and such.

Move fast: I like to execute fast. I love competing with myself. Also, done is better than perfect.

Kaizen: I continuously learn new things and improve my existing self by examining my past work and mistakes.

Soft-skills: I pay attention to how I treat others around me and how I can make it a comfortable experience.

8. My values

Values are things you hold dear to your heart. If someone were to negotiate a work environment with you, these are the things that would be the hardest to compromise on.

Speed: I don’t like when things move slow, hence I’ll do whatever is reasonable to speed them up.

Growth: Learning is very important to me, from the earliest stages of my life. Knowledge is happiness.

People: I treasure people around me and our relationships, and I can’t do work in a way that might bring them harm.

9. My workflow

Start with this section. Describe what does your day look like.

Productivity bursts: I don’t do a lot throughout the whole day, but every day I find some time to sit down, get in the zone and do some amazingly productive work.

Learner and teacher: I look for opportunities to help others and to learn something new, every day.

Socialize: Colleagues and friends? Yes please. Let’s have a beer buddy. I love to take a break with my peeps at work and talk about the non-work related stuff.

Iterating on the document

When you start writing this document, you embark on a journey. You won’t get it “right” from the start. It will never be “done”. Keep going up and down the document. As you start moving bottom up, you will occasionally see that something you wrote in your bottom section, say “workflow” for example, is not so crucial as you thought. Sometimes you will discover something in the middle, say a “leadership value” you care about, and you will see that it’s actually not reflected in any way with your values. So you think a bit about those and edit one or the other (or both) to make them “sync” with each other. Remember, the journey is more important than the destination.

Reviewing the document

Once you are happy with your doc, find a good friend of yours who knows you better than you know yourself, and ask them to read your doc. Ask for their opinion. Does it sound like you? Would they add or change anything?

Keep it alive

Review the doc from time to time (once a quarter or a year) and tweak it. We all change with time, after all.

Conclusion

Thank you for taking your valuable time to read my article! I hope you will find this exercise as exciting, revealing and rewarding as I have. And thanks to my awesome mentor L.C. for sharing this with me and allowing me to share it with you.