Optimism
I think this might be one of those times where the title might lead to confusion in the comment section and leads people a bit astray.<p>I saw this talk in person at Nordic Ruby, and it was one of the best talks I&#x27;ve seen (and I&#x27;ve seen a bunch). Strangely enough, I don&#x27;t really think back and think much about &quot;optimism&quot; when I think of the talk, though, even though the talk <i>is</i> about optimists.<p>My takeaway was the type of tooling and thought processes that are advantageous when approaching problems and conflict. In many talks — mine included — people will say something along the lines of &quot;be nice to your teammates and leave good feedback&quot;, for example, but that&#x27;s really vague. Reg&#x27;s talk helped me understand <i>what</i> that type of feedback might be, how it can be explicitly phrased, and how I can give concrete feedback without being antagonistic. I think it makes for a more effective argument, especially when building product, but also it just makes for friendlier humans.<p>Yeah, this does lead to &quot;optimistic people&quot;, hence the title, but I just thought it was weird to see discussion here about the merits of positive people versus negative people. I think the talk&#x27;s a much bigger dialogue about interacting with humans and, possibly more importantly, yourself.<p>Anyway, I really liked the talk, and as much as this Markdown is great at getting the point across, this is one of the talks I&#x27;d suggest actually watching. \m&#x2F;