I know I’ve been focusing a little too hard on work when I start dreaming about work stuff. I was tiptoeing close to the edge of doing too much just before my vacation, working a half hour or an hour extra most days just to have a clean slate when I left, shortening my lunch …
I value what I can’t do more than what I can do. Of course I’m proud that I herded the llamas into their pen without letting any escape into the hills, but (my brain says to me) it was pretty easy, so clearly it wasn’t that hard, and anyone could have done it if they’d …
Where’s the line between being efficient, being lazy, and taking shortcuts which are inadvisable? A programmer looks for ways to make their own life easier. In the best case this means we write code to automate manual tasks and save ourselves time; we look for standard libraries instead of reinventing the wheel with each project; …
I overheard a conversation yesterday that set my teeth on edge. A couple guys were jump-starting a woman’s car, and bitching at her for standing around. “What are you doing? You have to get in the car and turn it on!” With an obvious message of “you stupid person, why are you wasting our time?” …
Growing up, my dad used “you people” to refer to the rest of the inhabitants of the house when we’d done something he didn’t like. It was inevitably combined with “always”. “You people always leave the lights on when you leave the room!” This phrase is custom-tailored to hit just exactly wrong: “You people” excluded …
When I see an ad that encourages me to come join a young team, it negatively influences my view of that company. Best case: the person writing the ad is using “young” as a synonym for energy, enthusiasm and drive without thinking a lot about it. Usual case: the team being hired for is currently …
Those of us working in agile environments hear words like ‘sprints’, ‘scrum’ and ‘coach’ at work but probably don’t give a lot of thought to their original meaning – and today I want to ruminate about sprints. A sprint, originally, is a race over a short distance. All that matters is getting over the finish …
The prime directive of agile retrospectives: “Regardless of what we discover, we understand and truly believe that everyone did the best job they could, given what they knew at the time, their skills and abilities, the resources available, and the situation at hand.” This is supposed to create a supportive framework for a meeting where …
Some things I don’t do because, while I can produce perfectly adequate results, my results are not world-changing. I may enjoy the process of getting there, but not enough to overcome the feeling when I look at the result: yes, that’s okay, but it’s not stunning. I enjoyed drawing and painting in school and I’m …
Let’s talk focus. Sometimes, you really just have to get something done and you’re really just not in the head space to sit down and do it. For me, that was yesterday afternoon. I had to get prepared for a meeting coming up. I blocked off my entire afternoon after 3PM, figuring I’d be done …