Jonathan closed his post with the following questions for others working in the sector:
How have you integrated recognition of the industry’s flaws into your professional identity? How have you learned to recognize development’s problems, while continuing to work in the field or advocating for its expansion? How do you motivate yourselves on tough days when you doubt the impact of your efforts?Among others, WhyDev reached out to me to respond (perhaps based on my own quarrels with some of these questions in the past). You can see my brief response here, as well as a response from Chad Bissonnette of Roots of Development.
Here is a part of my reply:
To motivate myself in this work, I try to do the following: learn from mistakes and errors (both mine and others’) to avoid repeating them and to improve other work; make special note of success stories when I do find them and remember them for future reference; and never take myself too seriously, especially in interactions with people offering praise for ‘doing good work’ or ‘helping people.’ They may mean well, but they do not fully understand the work I do (and that’s not really their fault, either).
