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How You Shape Your World With Macro and Micro Stories

Summary

The episode begins by illustrating how we naturally communicate through stories, using the example of describing breakfast. The host, Jonathan Cattralli, explains that stories are not necessarily fictions but are models or approximations of reality that focus our attention. They help us engage with experiences and gather information that might otherwise be obscure. The key point is that telling ourselves a story is fundamentally about choosing where to direct our attention, identifying tension points, main characters, and underlying imperatives.

A significant portion of our self-narratives consists of recurring ‘macro stories’—persistent templates we apply repeatedly across different situations. These might relate to perceived strengths, weaknesses, or identity roles, such as seeing oneself as ‘a smart developer.’ These macro stories reinforce beliefs, perspectives, and sometimes biases. The host cautions against conflating these with static personality traits, emphasizing they are active lenses through which we view our world and our role within it.

The discussion then introduces ‘micro stories’—our moment-to-moment perceptions and narratives of daily experiences. Often, micro stories (like a moment of failure) can seem to conflict with our macro stories (like the identity of being competent). The host suggests we typically view these as antagonistic, with one judging or trying to control the other. Instead, he advocates developing curiosity about how they coexist and fit together.

The final part of the episode focuses on integration. Rather than discarding a macro story when a micro story contradicts it (e.g., ‘I’m a smart developer’ vs. ‘I made a mistake’), we should explore how to update or combine them. This curious, non-judgmental approach can soften our self-assessment and lead to a more harmonious progression. By observing how macro and micro stories merge, we can change how we relate to our narratives and fundamentally alter the stories we tell ourselves.

Recommendations

Communities

  • Developer Tea Discord — An online community for listeners to discuss episodes, engage with content, and connect with other developers focused on career and personal growth, described as calm and level-headed.

Tools

  • Gun.io — A platform for freelance developers that handles client vetting, project matching, contracts, invoicing, and payments, aiming to reduce administrative overhead.

Topic Timeline

  • 00:00:00 — Introduction to storytelling through everyday examples — The episode opens with a thought experiment about describing breakfast, illustrating that our communication is inherently narrative. The host, Jonathan Cattralli, introduces the core theme: we see and communicate about the world through the lens of stories. He clarifies that stories are models of reality that focus our attention, not necessarily deceptive fictions.
  • 00:04:19 — The concept of recurring macro stories — The host explains that many stories we tell ourselves are repeats or revised versions of persistent templates. These ‘macro stories’ are recurring narratives we apply to our experiences, often reinforcing beliefs, perspectives, or biases. He uses the example of identifying with a role like ‘a smart developer’ and how that creates expectations for our behavior.
  • 00:07:07 — Defining macro stories and their impact — Jonathan formally introduces the term ‘macro stories’ as the persistent narrative frameworks through which we view the world. He explains how they shape our experience by reinforcing our beliefs about our strengths, faults, and identity. The way we react to these recurring stories fundamentally constitutes our lived experience.
  • 00:11:18 — Introducing micro stories and the potential for conflict — The host contrasts macro stories with ‘micro stories,’ which are our moment-to-moment perceptions and narratives of daily events. He describes how micro stories (like experiencing failure) can collide with our macro stories (like an identity of competence). This often creates a sense of antagonism between our immediate experience and our larger self-concept.
  • 00:12:46 — Harmonizing macro and micro stories through curiosity — Instead of seeing macro and micro stories as antagonistic, the host advises developing curiosity about how they fit together. Rather than using a micro story to judge a macro story (or vice versa), we should explore how they can coexist and inform each other. This approach can lead to updating our narratives and softening our self-judgment.

Episode Info

  • Podcast: Developer Tea
  • Author: Jonathan Cutrell
  • Category: Technology Business Careers Society & Culture
  • Published: 2021-08-23T07:00:00Z
  • Duration: 00:16:38

References

Podcast Info

Transcript

[00:00:00] If I were to ask you to tell me about your breakfast this morning, I want you to think

[00:00:09] for about three seconds about how you would respond, even if you didn’t have breakfast.

[00:00:16] Most people would respond something like this.

[00:00:19] Well, I woke up a little bit late.

[00:00:22] So I went to the pantry and I grabbed a bar, an energy bar, so I could get out the door

[00:00:30] and get my kids to school on time.

[00:00:33] Or the alternative is just as possible.

[00:00:38] I woke up early, I made myself my favorite breakfast.

[00:00:43] I really enjoy cooking breakfast in the morning and it’s part of my ritual, my routine.

[00:00:51] And regardless of your answer, it’s not really about breakfast today.

[00:00:57] Really what we’re talking about is the way that we see and communicate about the world.

[00:01:05] My name is Jonathan Cattralli listening to Developer Tea.

[00:01:08] My goal on the show is to help driven developers like you find clarity, perspective, and purpose

[00:01:12] in their careers.

[00:01:15] For example, you probably wouldn’t say that you had 214 grams of food and 25 of those

[00:01:29] were in the form of coffee and the rest of it was cereal.

[00:01:39] This seems like a ridiculous idea that you would go through the process of giving me

[00:01:45] absolute specifics.

[00:01:48] And so how is it that we see and communicate about the world?

[00:01:56] And almost invariably, with some exceptions, and we’ll talk a little bit about those, we

[00:02:01] see the world through the lens of stories.

[00:02:07] We’ve talked about stories quite a bit on the show, but I want to talk today about the

[00:02:12] importance of recognizing our persistent stories and the importance of seeing the stories that

[00:02:19] we are kind of actively engaging or the story, kind of the narrative of the day that we’re

[00:02:29] experiencing in the moment or in a particular time period.

[00:02:34] So stories are a way of engaging an idea, engaging an experience so that you understand

[00:02:44] what happens.

[00:02:47] You can kind of tell yourself a story and because you experience life through this lens

[00:02:53] of narrative, you may be able to gather a lot of extra information that otherwise would

[00:02:59] be obscure, difficult to obtain.

[00:03:04] If you tell yourself a story and I want to be clear about something because it might

[00:03:10] sound like when we say tell yourself a story, we’re talking about a fiction and in one way

[00:03:16] that is true in that all stories are kind of like models, models of reality.

[00:03:24] They are an approximation and they leave out a lot of detail and so it’s not a complete

[00:03:31] picture, but it’s not necessarily us deceiving ourselves.

[00:03:37] Stories are not necessarily wrong or inaccurate per se, they can be, but telling yourself

[00:03:44] a story is choosing where your attention is focused.

[00:03:51] That’s kind of the primary concept.

[00:03:53] Where your attention is focused, what are the tension points in that story, what is

[00:03:59] kind of the main character maybe, the main plot of that story, is there some kind of

[00:04:10] imperative that’s coming from the story.

[00:04:12] These are all things that you might include in the stories that you tell yourself.

[00:04:19] Here’s what’s interesting, a lot of the stories that we tell ourselves are actually repeats.

[00:04:28] They’re essentially like a revised version of the same story that we’ve been telling

[00:04:34] ourselves over and over.

[00:04:36] We’re going to talk a little bit more about how we tell ourselves the same stories and

[00:04:43] also how that’s changing our day-to-day experiences right after we talk about today’s sponsor

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[00:07:07] If we see the world through the lens of story, then the stories that we tell ourselves in

[00:07:15] many ways make up the sum of our experience.

[00:07:20] How we react to those stories and especially the recurring stories we tell ourselves.

[00:07:30] I am going to call these macro stories for the sake of this podcast and really going

[00:07:36] with this framework of narrative and story as a lens through which we see the world.

[00:07:43] A way that you can imagine this affecting you is by recognizing, let’s say, a strength

[00:07:50] of yours or a fault of yours, something that you’re weak at.

[00:07:58] Try to remember a few experiences where you knew that that was the strength.

[00:08:04] The stories that you tell yourself about those experiences are reinforcing something.

[00:08:12] They’re reinforcing a belief, they’re reinforcing maybe a perspective.

[00:08:20] It’s a kind of a belief about the world or the people around you.

[00:08:25] Maybe they’re reinforcing a bias that you have, but if you think about the things that

[00:08:32] are recurring, which is why I say think about a strength because you’re likely to have experienced

[00:08:36] it multiple times if you’re identifying it as a strength, think about the stories that

[00:08:42] are happening to you over and over.

[00:08:45] Another version of this concept is personality traits.

[00:08:51] Personality traits are somewhat static and so I want to avoid those when we’re talking

[00:08:56] about how we view the world in an active way.

[00:09:00] But if you imagine that your role in life is to be a smart developer, for example, well

[00:09:10] then your story about how you are living your life out, if you were to experience a failure,

[00:09:19] you are kind of failing in your storyline.

[00:09:23] In other words, the character that you’ve laid out for yourself, the role that you’re

[00:09:28] playing for yourself, you are not living up to that character.

[00:09:33] You’ve set out these expectations of being a smart developer and possibly in your story

[00:09:40] a smart developer wouldn’t fail at these things.

[00:09:45] If however you were to alter that story, if you were to understand that you were telling

[00:09:51] yourself this narrative, which is why we’re talking about it by the way, and instead of

[00:09:57] telling yourself the narrative that you are a smart developer, you adjust some of the

[00:10:01] terminology, you adjust kind of the identity language in this narrative.

[00:10:09] That you are a smart developer who is also persistent and tolerant of failure.

[00:10:15] Now when you kind of experience that failure in the moment, it doesn’t jar against your

[00:10:23] story.

[00:10:25] Now this might seem like a nuance, but the way that we see ourselves, the way that we

[00:10:32] narratively understand our situation in life, our situation at work, all of these things

[00:10:40] matter to how we are relating to them.

[00:10:44] How you relate to the world is heavily dependent on this narrative storytelling.

[00:10:52] We mentioned the macro stories, these are kind of the templates that you find yourself

[00:10:56] using over and over and over.

[00:10:58] If you find yourself constantly dissatisfied with jobs for example, or maybe you find yourself

[00:11:04] overly optimistic, and again these sound like personality traits, but actually these are

[00:11:13] stories that you’re kind of copying and pasting into new environments.

[00:11:18] As you play out those stories, you may also experience micro stories.

[00:11:25] Just like what we were just talking about where you have a moment of failure, your macro

[00:11:29] story is that you are a smart, you’re a competent developer, but the micro story was a failure.

[00:11:36] And so there are times when we have these kind of collisions between what we’re experiencing

[00:11:41] in the moment and our larger picture defaults, what we expect from the world, our macro stories.

[00:11:52] Here’s the thing, we might see these two things as antagonistic towards each other.

[00:11:58] We might see our micro stories, our day to day experiences and how we perceive those

[00:12:04] to be antagonistic to those macro stories, our larger identity and recurring themes

[00:12:11] in our lives.

[00:12:13] But the truth is that they do coexist.

[00:12:17] And so instead of seeing one in service to the other, in other words your macro story

[00:12:21] kind of trying to control or judge your micro story, or instead of seeing your day to day

[00:12:30] moment as a judgment on that macro story, a way of saying you’re going to use this day

[00:12:38] to day micro story as justification for changing something in a much larger sense, I want you

[00:12:46] to develop a curiosity, that’s kind of a soft word for a podcast about software engineering,

[00:12:56] develop a curiosity about how they fit together.

[00:13:01] How is it that a smart developer is making mistakes?

[00:13:06] Well, maybe my understanding of what a smart developer is could be updated.

[00:13:12] Instead of saying I’m going to throw out the idea that I’m a smart developer, the macro

[00:13:18] story of being intelligent or, you know, kind of offering to the world your brain power.

[00:13:27] Instead of imagining that as now invalid, what happens when you try to combine these

[00:13:35] stories together, even if they seem paradoxical?

[00:13:39] If you open yourself up to that curiosity, then you’re much more likely to change the

[00:13:45] way you relate to the stories that you’re telling yourself, and possibly you’ll start

[00:13:51] changing the way that you tell those stories at a fundamental level.

[00:13:57] There might be recurring stories that you really should let go of, and it’s possible

[00:14:04] that your micro stories, these day to day experiences, your perception of them is skewed.

[00:14:11] And so as you watch these two things kind of merge together and harmonize in a way,

[00:14:19] it’s likely that you’ll soften the way that you judge that macro story, you’ll soften

[00:14:24] the way that you judge the micro story.

[00:14:27] Instead, you’ll see it as a progression together.

[00:14:34] Thanks so much for listening to today’s episode.

[00:14:36] Thank you again to today’s sponsor, Gunn.io.

[00:14:39] If you want to get started as a freelancer, but you don’t want to get started doing a

[00:14:43] bunch of paperwork to support that venture, Gunn.io has your back.

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[00:14:55] If you enjoy Developer T and you want us to keep doing what we are doing, then the best

[00:15:01] way to make that happen is to share the show with other engineers like you, who are looking

[00:15:08] to level up in their careers, who you believe will enjoy the episodes, who can benefit from

[00:15:14] the content that we’re talking about here.

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[00:15:23] Of course, iTunes is still the big dominant one.

[00:15:26] So if you don’t know which one to use, that’s a good one to start with.

[00:15:30] Those ratings and reviews make a huge difference and they last kind of forever.

[00:15:35] The oldest ratings and reviews of the show are still around and people will still go

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[00:15:44] So those are incredibly helpful.

[00:15:47] Also last thing, if you are enjoying these episodes and you wish you could take another

[00:15:52] step, you wish you could engage the content more or maybe discuss it with someone, or

[00:15:57] you just kind of feel like you’re like-minded to this pursuit of becoming a better developer

[00:16:05] both in your life and in your career, then join the Developer Tea Discord.

[00:16:09] That’s where you can do all of those things.

[00:16:11] DeveloperTea.com slash Discord.

[00:16:13] We have a great community there and it’s really one of the most, kind of the calmest social

[00:16:20] community that I’m a part of.

[00:16:22] So I really appreciate the levelheadedness of that group.

[00:16:26] Thanks so much for listening and until next time, enjoy your tea.

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