I used to be a person with massive anxiety for perfectionism. I never wanted to make a mistake, no matter how small. Thanks mom!
I went with my now-wife to Italy several years ago and we did a cooking class. I was learning to make pasta and trying to make the egg well as perfectly round as possible, and the chef teaching us told me that. Weirdly it struck me as super obvious, and it helped me frame my anxiety in a better light. It helped me figure out my anxiety wasn’t realistic, and eventually lead to therapy and medications to help.
Now, I use this phrase at work all the time to remind my teams of software engineers at work that it’s alright if something isn’t working. We don’t work with medical systems or nuclear plants. Bugs won’t cause the end of the world, so it’s not worth panicking over. We’re just making pasta.
I tell myself and coworkers similar things when we’re stressed. I put in production lines for auto parts. Something always goes horribly wrong and delays things. People freak out and I tell them that worst case scenario is some soccer moms will have to wait a month for their upgraded ride.
“Relax, you’re just making pasta.”
I used to be a person with massive anxiety for perfectionism. I never wanted to make a mistake, no matter how small. Thanks mom!
I went with my now-wife to Italy several years ago and we did a cooking class. I was learning to make pasta and trying to make the egg well as perfectly round as possible, and the chef teaching us told me that. Weirdly it struck me as super obvious, and it helped me frame my anxiety in a better light. It helped me figure out my anxiety wasn’t realistic, and eventually lead to therapy and medications to help.
Now, I use this phrase at work all the time to remind my teams of software engineers at work that it’s alright if something isn’t working. We don’t work with medical systems or nuclear plants. Bugs won’t cause the end of the world, so it’s not worth panicking over. We’re just making pasta.
I tell myself and coworkers similar things when we’re stressed. I put in production lines for auto parts. Something always goes horribly wrong and delays things. People freak out and I tell them that worst case scenario is some soccer moms will have to wait a month for their upgraded ride.