We have all heard the saying I based this week's editorial on. It has been credited to Benjamin Franklin and goes like this, “You can do anything you set your mind to”. This is such a powerful way of thinking when you are starting a task. “I can do it, no matter what anyone says.”

But of course, as technology people, we are pretty logical thinking people, so we know this is not even somewhat true. For example, if you set your mind to it, you cannot make yourself a ten-foot-tall automobile. For those of you not living with the Imperial system of measurement, this is 3.048 meters, or if you are really an interesting person: 0.00164579 nautical miles. No matter how you measure it or how hard you set your mind to it… you will never be an automobile. Even if you practice hard, it is not going to happen. And in a slightly less silly scenario, unless you have done a lot of medical training, you cannot do my next hip replacement, no matter how hard you set your mind to it.

The challenge is to put all the non-obvious doubts out of your mind and put your mind to the task. Just like when I said in the first entry in this series that you need to believe that there are no dumb ideas, the principle here is the same. Rationally you know that you can’t do just anything, but if you start with the fundamental idea that setting your mind to a task you can do what seems like the impossible; it will more often be true.

My real-world example

My biggest example is this blog and literally everything I have written the past 20 years. Before I started writing professionally, I had never written a paper of any considerable size. In college I strictly avoided all the classes where writing was involved unless it was a required class. Even then, to my recollection I had never written more than 5 pages on one subject, and I did not get great marks for that effort either.

So, my first writing task as a professional? Write a 607-page book on Database Design. I got myself into that mess by asking someone at WROX press if there was a book where I could learn more about the subject. I was certainly no expert then, and I don’t really consider myself an expert now as I do know a few of the experts in the field like Joe Celko. I just have learned the practical application and enough about why it matters to help others do the same.

I look back on that process as probably the first time I really did apply the “anything is possible” principle to my life. It was one of the most challenging things I have ever done, and was when I coined the phrase “it is awesome to have written a book.”

Yet, I kept doing it. This has always been curious to me, as I have continued to write for a living. If that experience was so bad, why did I keep doing it? Because I learned I could, and from there I learned how it was done, through research and great writing mentors in the form of a few editors I have worked with.

I am convinced this is also what makes DBAs indispensable

As a typical example, you are told there is a query that is running slow. Of course, we are ready and able to check the query plan, find the missing index, apply it and take the win. This is just easy hero standing stuff. But sometimes, you get a query that is 4 pages long, generated by a tool so you can’t easily alter it, and the query plan prints out in SQL Server Management Studio so small you would need a monitor the size of the moon to view it all.

Add in that usually this is one of those “augh, we need this now!” sort of things and not only do you have the self-doubt that you can handle this, you have plain old time anxiety that tends to cause even great sports figures to make mistakes because you are feeling the pressure of “what happens when I fail?”

Of course, most of the time you get to it, and you find the issue, and get it fixed. Of course, the problem with all of this is that sometimes, the reality is that you come to a place where it can’t be fixed, at least by you, and you need help. At these points it is imperative to not let the imposter lie creep into your head and make you lose your confidence. Even though you logically know you can’t do anything in the world, you need that kind of confidence to start doing something that feels out of your reach.

For your own good, failure must be treated positively either a lesson in what to do next, or a validation that you actually did everything possible.

What about you?

In your own career in data, how many times have you had that dread. “I can’t do this. It just isn’t possible.” I suspect that if your answer is “a few times”, you are probably referring to a few times a week, or even a day.

Do you have any examples you want to share in the comments where you just had to tell yourself you can do something that seemed impossible for you, and then you actually delivered? Did it change you in any way?