In February of 2025, I defined the thesis statement for my book. I wrote at least a dozen uninspiring versions of my thesis statement.

For example:

You’re in a senior role in tech, and you want to keep growing. But you don’t want to be a people manager. What now? Unlock the next level of your career by developing leadership skills and big-picture thinking.

It never felt quite right.

People I talked to thought I was writing either a career guide (“how to get promoted”) or a soft skills manual (“how to communicate better”). I knew it was neither. But I struggled to say what it was.

Book coach Luvvie Ajayi Jones has told us that we should ignore all doubts and stick to our plan, because the doubts are just procrastination. I wanted to believe that…

But whenever I wrote or explained the thesis statement, I felt like I was shooting arrows and missing the target every time.

Was this doubt a distraction I should ignore, or was it trying to tell me something important?

AI disrupts the plan

Furthermore, I was not planning to write about AI. This wasn’t a book on technology, it was about the people side of software development. Oh, I’d mention AI, sure. Maybe briefly at the end or something.

Then I went to Enterprise Technology Leadership Summit, in September. I realized that I couldn’t leave AI out of the book. AI was changing the working life of developers at all levels.

But now my doubt was even greater. Would my writing still be relevant?

Photo by Stephen Phillips on Unsplash

I think if I had a thesis statement I believed in strongly, I wouldn’t have been so easily discouraged. But these career-advice, soft-skills thesis statements were hard for me to defend.

I put it all on hold for a while to focus on my LeadDev StaffPlus talk, go on vacation, and get ready for the Grace Hopper Celebration at the start of November.

Getting clarity

During the Grace Hopper Celebration, I met Melissa M. Reeve, author of the upcoming book Hyperadaptive. She kindly agreed to talk to me about book writing.

“What’s your goal?” she asked.

I didn’t have a good answer for that. The lack of clarity that had been haunting me since February needed to be resolved. All other questions would be easier to answer once I had that clarity.

I set about defining my goal. It wound up being different from the thesis statements I’d tried in the past.

Here’s where I landed:

The goal: Sharing how our uniquely human skills and strengths can help us work better and happier.

• Uniquely human skills and strengths - where we excel as humans (intution based on experience, big-picture thinking, relationship-building, etc.)
• Sharing how they can help us - stories from my experience, learnings from my reading
• Work better - technical excellence
• Work happier - with less suffering (burnout, isolation, overwhelm) and greater wellbeing.

Finally, I felt like my arrows were hitting the target. We weren’t talking about career development or how to be a better communicator anymore. We were talking about why embracing our full humanity is the key to both technical excellence and wellbeing at work.

Now that’s a message I want to get into the hands of as many developers as I can. It feels like more than a book topic for me. It feels like a mission.

Humanity Matters

It isn’t the first time that embracing our full humanity in tech has come up as the topic.

In early September, before any of the conferences, I visited my friend Helen (hi!) in Vermont. We sat at her kitchen table, sipping tea and talking about my book plans.

We talked about “Humanity Matters” as a potential title. I don’t remember who suggested it. Even if I suggested it, it was our conversation that led to it, so I’ll give Helen the credit.

Helen declared that we’d found the title. I wasn’t so sure. It sounded great, but the immensity of it scared me. Could I really write a book called “Humanity Matters”? I’m just a software developer, after all.

I started to look into why humanity matters in software development specifically, I saw the increasing importance of the same human skills that I had needed as I advanced in my career.

In a world where AI can do a lot of the coding, what makes us human is what makes us essential.

That’s when I realized: AI hadn’t made my book irrelevant, it had made it urgent.

Everyone I’ve talked to about “humanity matters” has told me how needed such a book is right now. People are craving that message.

“Humanity Matters” is it.

But I’m still left with the question: can I do it?

Self-doubt

I had several reasonable explanations for why I hadn’t made the progress I wanted on the book. My goal needed clarifying. AI changed things. I got busy with conferences and travel.

And all of that is true, but using those excuses keeps me from acknowledging that I was also blocked by self-doubt.

Could I write a book worthy of the title Humanity Matters?

What I do know is that self-doubt can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. If I let it stop me, then no, I can’t write that or any book.

Some of the best things I’ve done came from going for it anyway, despite the self-doubt.

So what does this mean for the coming year?

Book goals for 2026

In 2026, I’m going to thank self-doubt for showing up. But I’m not going to let it run the show.

Self-doubt means well. It’s just trying to keep me “safe” by keeping me away from anything where success isn’t certain. The problem is that it also keeps me away from anything where success is possible.

I want a draft I’m ready to submit to an editor in 2026, and I want to have a publishing plan (e.g., a signed contract with a publisher).

I’d love to see a printed copy of my book in my hands in 2026, but that might be too ambitious. I will need time to make the book shine.

But “first draft done” isn’t ambitious enough. “The job of the first draft is to exist,” says Luvvie’s voice in my head. I can do better than that in a year.

Doubt is a tricky signal to read

Doubt in the first half of 2025 was pointing me at the problems with my old thesis statements. I was missing the mark. It wasn’t doubt in my own abilities, it was a red flag that something wasn’t right.

Luvvie wasn’t wrong to suggest that I might be procrastinating if I was doubting after I’d found a thesis statement that hit the mark. But my initial attempts never really landed.

Then, doubt in the second half of 2025 was self-doubt. I didn’t see “Humanity Matters” as a possible direction at first. I pushed that suggestion away as too big for me.

Humanity Matters was an audacious goal. Sometimes, when we start to get close to our true assignment, resistance arises. If I had been paying closer attention, I might have realized that the doubt was telling me that I was hitting the target.

All of this might only be clear to me in hindsight. So here’s another goal for 2026: while I’m thanking the doubt for trying to protect me, I might also take a closer look at it to see if it has a lesson for me.

Is it alerting me to something wrong that I need to address? Or is it an old habit that is trying to protect me from something that isn’t a threat? It might not be running the show, but I can at least give it my attention to see if there’s a lesson for me that I can discover.

Assignment accepted. Let’s go!

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