I hear two types of grunts in the Trough of Disillusionment: which grunt is yours?

I visited the home of two friends. I’ll call them Goofus and Gallant. (Not their real names.) My two friends were in the kitchen, peeling hard boiled eggs. 

By the time Gallant had peeled three, Goofus hadn’t finished his first. Gallant possessed an amazing egg-peeling technique that was superior to the skills of Goofus.

“Let me show you how to peel an egg so that we can get this done faster,” Gallant said. Goofus refused Gallant's help. Then, Goofus uttered a phrase that makes me cringe. 

“That’s not the way I was taught,” he said.

Oh, Goofus. It’s not your phrase I hate. It’s the attitude that goes along with it.

Caption: Easter's coming! It might be time to learn a fun new way to peel a hard boiled egg.

Consider the passive voice phrase "that's not the way I was taught". It's hardly ever uttered with excitement or enthusiasm. It’s almost never said with this tone:

 “Whee! That’s not the way I was taught! Your way is so much better! Cool! Let me learn from you!”

Rather, it’s almost always resistant and recalcitrant.

 “That’s not the way I was taught. I spit on your evil, black magic ways. Wrong! Bad! This sucks. Disaster!

Note this kind of resistance when some brilliant new technology or method is introduced at your own organization. You might hear something like this:

“It used to take me a half hour to do this. But ever since we introduced this new method, it takes 45 minutes! Sad!”

A calm person will be called to the scene. This rational-sounding person might explain the trough of disillusionment to the snarling people who want to return to bygone ways. The reasonable-looking person might use a chart that looks like this:

Graph Credit: Jeremykemp at English Wikipedia [GFDL (https://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

But calm explanations with charts do not persuade emotionally unhinged people. This approach does not work, yet reasonable-sounding people keep persisting. 

Ironically, this makes the behavior of reasonable-sounding people entirely unreasonable. Further irony: the trough of disillusionment is not even scientific. There is no data to support it. (Calm people who show up with charts can often create the illusion of being reasonable.)

But I’ll admit it. It’s not much fun to feel as if you are flailing in a trough. And as people, we will make our mulish grunts. (Especially when reasonable people tell us we're in a trough. Grunting is reasonable behavior for a trough-dweller.)

So go ahead. Express your frustration and peevishness. Vent. 

But be aware of the source of your grunts and grumbles. I often hear two categories of disgruntlement:

One type of grunt is stubborn and nostalgic. It’s the grunt that says this:

“The old ways were better, dagnabit. Let's go back to the way things were. Everything used to be great. Now it's a mess. A mess!

The second type of grunt takes personal responsibility and points to progress. 

“Argh! I wish we could all learn faster! I want to get out of this trough and into a spectacular high-rise future.”

See? You can be a regressive grunter or a progressive grunter. Me? I’d rather not grunt at all. But if vexed, I'm more likely to grunt over my inability to move forward faster. My grunt points to taking responsibility. It doesn't blame or cling to a sub-par past.

Pining for a sub-optimal past will leave us grunting in the mud.

But it takes all kinds. Every so often, I get to work with a regressive, nostalgic, finger-pointing grunter. At best, I find their tedium mildly humorous. At worst, I find that they can work themselves up to a lathered state where they become dangerously unhinged.

For example, I once edited the work of a seasoned writer. He consistently typed two spaces after each sentence. Since this is the 21st century, I told him to stop. (Writers quit putting two spaces after sentences over 30 years ago, thanks to the advent of desktop publishing.)

“Send me your copy with only one space after each sentence,” I said. 

“I can’t help it,” he whined. “That’s not how I was taught.”

“Yes, and that’s not how I learned, either. It might take you a few hours to re-train yourself, but make the effort. It’ll be worth it.”

“I can’t. I just can’t. Why can’t you just do a search and replace on my copy?”

He screamed that I was being unreasonable. He chastised me for being ageist. He said I needed to make allowances for older people who might have learned different ways of doing things. 

I’m older than this writer. His accusation of ageism made no sense. And what’s up with screaming histrionics over punctuation? If he's going to explode over something trivial, what will happen when he's required to face substantive change?

Compare this attitude to another writer I edited. She didn’t use Oxford commas when they were warranted. Someone in her past taught her to not-use them to save on ink.

“Wow, your savings must have been minuscule!” I joked. “It’s OK. Go ahead and use Oxford commas. We’ll splurge.”

“K,” she said. From that moment on, she turned in copy with Oxford commas. No screaming. No grunting. No big whoop. 

Was that really so hard? 

I don’t want to get into heated arguments about punctuation. And the use of connector words to start sentences. Or ending sentences with prepositions. Stuff like that. 

Maybe later. But not now. Not when we have bigger issues to address. 

In the coming years, we’re all going to be introduced to new technologies and techniques. And yes, we might grumble or feel vexed when we are in the throes of learning something new. It can be frustrating; but not nearly as frustrating to see momentum and progress blocked.

Will you grumble with nostalgia about a past you can do nothing to improve? Will you rant and scream like a lunatic? Or will you express your impatience for not being quick enough to arrive at the progressive future you imagined? 

Try to understand the psychological framework of the grunting you hear. Some of it is regressive and awful. But quite a lot of it shows vision for a brighter future.

I like learning new methods and new technologies. If I learn about a bad habit, I'll work to ditch it. And I find that if I approach newness with enthusiasm, my time in the mythical trough becomes a tad more enjoyable and rewarding. 

But that’s the way I was taught. 

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Laura Bergells writes and teaches. You can book me for live workshops. Or take my classes online at #LinkedInLearning. I teach Public Speaking and Crisis Communication. I also write a fair bit. You can hire me to pump out content.

Just don't hire me to edit right now. I need a bit of a break.