The Whine and Fall of the Old Guard

One of the things that I love about reading fiction is how simply and directly stories convey deep and inconvenient truths. I started reading Sydney Sheldon with his first novel, 'A Stranger in the mirror'. If I'm not mistaken, it is the only or one of the few novels by Sheldon that has a male protagonist. I don't remember the details of the story too much but there's one part where Sheldon has described the protagonist's decline as a famous artist in Hollywood.

He compares an actor with declining fame to an odor of fear that dogs smell - a scent that human beings themselves are unaware of.

The exact excerpt is: "There is a smell to failure. It is a stench that clings like a miasma. Just as dogs can detect the odor of fear in a human being, so people can sense when a man is on his way down.

Particularly in Hollywood. "

Now, not having worked in Hollywood, I cannot attest to that observation. But even in the quotidian work that I do, I think that the decline and descent of skill heads or heads of departments can be subtle but easy to spot. Or people who displayed great creativity and intellectual prowess at one time but are filled with derivative ideas today.

The strange part is that I'm not sure if one can be entirely inoculated against that kind of deterioration oneself.

But if I can take a guess about what signs a person displays when they are on their way down (and out), here are my top 4:

1. You have not consumed content in the same format that you are creating. If you are an instructional designer but you have not taken an online course or learned something new - anything that puts you in the specific spot of a learner, I'd say that person's ID skills has started fraying. (I specifically mean taking an online course if you are creating content for elearning courses. Not reading books on design or being a learner 'of Life'.)

2. If you have not given away your expertise for free. Not some two-penny opinion that you give off to your team mates. But some hard advice that actually helps someone else - like actually explaining the difference between writing a technical manual and an SOP to a technical writer. Or create some type of checklist that will help a designer decipher a storyboard. (I say this because instructional design for the workforce stems from an understanding that people want to do well. But adults may often feel embarrassed by admitting what they don't know. Experience in design, after a point, must extend to being sensitive about these aspects.)

3. If you have started feeling insecure because of someone who is from a different background as you. Especially if you are working with a freelancer who might have a span of experience that you don't. Insecurity is human. So is getting over it. But stewing in it and then trying to be dismissive of someone else's body of work or background is perhaps time to examine the rot. It has set in.

4. You are stuck and have been stuck for a long time. And you have fooled yourself into believing you deserve better. But we all have a part that is wise, And that part knows that you don't deserve better. This is as good as it will get.

Now, I don't know if everyone should be on this self-awareness journey to identify, ease and eradicate these traits. I reckon that there's dignity in just accepting that as long as the market pays you for the mediocrity you are now bringing in, there's no shame in the game.

Embrace the entropy.