managing expectations
and thinking about disappointment
I’ve been more intentional about managing expectations. As an optimist at heart, it’s felt easy to romanticize an outcome out of my control. It’s led to disappointments to the point where I wonder, should I try to become more pessimistic? Would that help? The answer is of course a little nuanced. There are many benefits to being an optimist and regular disappointment is one of the few drawbacks.
I like optimism. I remember taking a class about misanthropy and not being a fan. People are wonderful and inherently good. But people are also different and that can conflict with expectations.
Here’s a story: for one of my internships, I had a manager who seemed great. He was professional, put together, and well spoken. I was excited for the internship. On my first day, he told me that he changed my role. I was working on something completely different from what I had signed up for. I was confused, but I didn’t want to push back since I didn’t want to start on the wrong foot with them team. This was the first red flag.
At my midpoint review, we were slated to meet at a scheduled time but he was five minutes late. I walked to his desk area and noticed he was walking around. I asked if he was still free to meet and he asked me “How do you think you’re doing?” across the room filled with focused engineers. I responded “I think I’m doing well”. “Okay, there’s your review” he responded. And then he walked away.
Maybe this was a bad day for him. Either way, what could I do about it? “I’m just an intern”, I thought. I felt flustered. We also didn’t have recurring one-on-ones, so there wasn’t a time to discuss it again. When it came to our final review, I was reluctantly hopeful. Maybe the midpoint review was a one-off and he’d redeem himself. Wrong. He was late again, so I found him walking around again and asked: “Hey, we’re supposed to have a final review but you seem busy right now. Could I have R do our final review?”. “Sure” he said.
The internship wasn’t great. I felt like I was a cog in a machine, nothing more. But it engrained some lessons.
First, creating win-wins are great. At my final review, I assumed the possibility that he’d dodge me again. He wanted to avoid doing a review and I wanted to do a review for my final performance. Given his position as the team’s manager, I asked him to have someone else do my review so that he didn’t have to do it and I could get my final review. That saved him time and that gave me a final review from someone who cared about my work.
The second lesson involves the random nature of experiences. I didn’t actively seek this experience, but it was a byproduct of my expectations for positive experiences. Disappointment isn’t usually the expectation. Far from it, I was expecting the internship to be great. However, expectations sometimes not always being met is normal. No matter how surgical one is with carving out a perfect path, curveballs find their way. Disappointments are a part of the journey, not a sign of failure. Knowing that they’re a part of the journey makes their acceptance easier. And experiencing disappointment can be a stepping stone for something better.
This manifests itself well with interviews. It’s unhealthy to believe that interviews are deterministic. They’re usually best effort on both sides, and there are so many random variables at play. After enough interviews and compound learnings from rejections, offers eventually come. There would be no offers without the lessons from rejections.
Lastly, these experiences taught me the role of disappointing experiences and how to frame them. After seeing how that internship positively shaped my perspective on other work experiences, it made me grateful for the disappointing internship. This is because it gave me a deeper appreciation for great work experiences. In other internships, I could tell how patient and proactive my mentors and teammates were in making sure I had a great experience. I don’t think I would have been able to notice if it weren’t for my disappointing experience.
These experiences are healthy. Since I’ve graduated, I’ve had a lot of disappointing experiences in all facets of life—work, social, dating, and more. Instead of investing in adjusting my expectations, I’ve been trying to focus on finding acceptance instead. It feels good knowing that the feeling of disappointment is temporary but derived lessons last. Over time, estimating which day I’ll feel better by becomes easier which makes disappointment easier to manage.
The best days happen when disappointing experiences stop happening and the stars magically start aligning. You hit the milestone you’re looking for at work, your relationships are thriving, and you’re hitting new fitness PRs with weekend plans to look forward to. The spice on top is the deeper appreciation for these rare moments when the stars align because disappointing experiences are common.
After managing expectations better, I’ve started thinking of stars not aligning as a norm as opposed to the outlier. Life wouldn’t be exciting if there were no problems or if everything was perfect. Maybe this is the problem solving itch being loud, but there’s excitement in knowing that things could always be better. A brief taste of the stars aligning is just enough to make me anticipate the next instance of everything working out.
I recently felt many aspect of my lives were starting to deviate away from the norm. Work started to feel more exhausting, social events were less fulfilling, and personal goals weren’t progressing. It didn’t feel great, but I attributed it more to a sense of gradual burnout. This wasn’t what I was expecting, but I wasn’t as surprised either.
Instead of trying to prevent burnout, I’ve learned to prepare for it instead. No assumptions can be made on what’s out of my control. Being acutely aware of when it creeps up allows me to press the reset button whenever.
I got to do just that recently. I did the cliche trip to Japan, escaped my daily routine, and let my stomach make the big decisions. It’s strange—the trip was exhausting yet recharging. I bought enough to need another suitcase, ate enough for two (maybe even three), and wandered aimlessly with close friends in Tokyo.
I’m back in San Francisco. I have expectations for the year, and the meta-expectation that not everything will go as planned. I’ll keep trying to write, run, read and work—constants that I see for today and maybe for the near future. As for everything else, we’ll see :)
Thanks for sticking around, see you in the next one.