Category: Blog

Yesterday I talked about not being an a__hole and today I got time to think about asking question with kindness, which is kinda related.

My gf asked my if it was the right time to threw in the trash a few empty whisky bottles that I was keeping.
I agreed with her, but nonetheless I though “she was a little bit insensitive” and I didn’t mean in an harsh way, but still I thought the whole conversation could be improved.

Why and how?
First and foremost, by telling me that it was time to trash them she inherently told me that

1. she didn’t care about them
2. she didn’t care about my interest _about_ the bottles

Which is why in the first place I thought it wasn’t a nice move (although I wholeheartedly agreed).

To improve such conversation one example would be to ask question (BTW: I always think asking question to let people think through is a good way of moving forward)

Which questions?

1. _Hey, why are you keeping those bottles? Are they important to you?_
   This question start by asking about the other feelings about the problem
2. _Oh, I get it, so do you plan to keep them forever or will you be willing to keep only the most important ones?_
   This question start going into the issue, to understand how much important they are, and move forward.

From there, I think the conversation is easier and leaves less space to misunderstanding.
Yes, I know, this is not a topic that was hard to discuss, but you get the point, it’s all about caring for the other person.

Let’s say you just ate some terrible food in a restaurant you like (I sure did it tonight).
And let’s say it’s the first time happening, so it’s unusual.

You walk up to the man at the counter, he asks “was everything alright?”
What do you do?

1. You tell him that food was shitty, terrible, un-eatable.
2. You tell him that it was ok e ignore the problem

Honesty vs “let’s live in peace”.
I get it, honesty might not be for everyone because there’s a lot of stress linked with being honest, but honesty doesn’t necessarily mean that you must express yourself like an a__hole.
There are so many ways to talk, to tell, to teach.

In my case I walked to him and told him
“Ehi, the chicken was so-so. Like if it was too old, not very good. I’m telling you because if anyone else orders it it might have an issue with it, ok?”

I know, maybe you’re thinking “Why the hell should I pay for that?”
But didn’t we talked about not being an a__hole?
How many chewing-gum you’ve bought that were terrible? How many objects you’ve bought that you didn’t use?
If a dinner didn’t went as expected you might as well consider the possibility to ignore the problem and help them, instead of focusing only on yourself, right?

Because the main issue with all the problems like this is pride.
We have to protect our image, our pride, so that it’s not wasted time right?

But getting to others, being able to connect, communicate with honesty and no rage, to say what you want to say without your ego getting in the way is another story and it requires you, us, anyone to control. To be able to step back.

It’s easy, too much easy, to talk about what we didn’t get.
That’s why it’s easy to speak like an a__hole.
But if you don’t want to be that guy, then you have to mix what you have to say with kindness and step back.
Take a deep breath, and talk like if you were the one receiving the bad, bad news.

I was out of willpower today. Too many things to do, to many actions and decision to take.

I asked for help, and help I got, this is the great things of having friends 🙂
At the end of the day, though, I still had to do my work, and so I did it even if I was not really into it.
The reason?

There’s work that must be done, and there’s no way you should hide from it.

But as a developer I tend to ask myself if it’s ok or if I should automate it to simplify my life and I think I know the answer, although I must always ask myself if it’s ok for me to develop it or if it would be better if I pay for the software and save my time.

Time will fly, and what’s urgent won’t become more urgent unless it is really important.
But if you think about it, if it’s so important it will find a way to be noticed.

Live slowly.

We made a surprise birthday party to one of our friends.
He didn’t usually organize his birthday, so we did it for him this year.

Turns out it wasn’t a good choice because he wanted something different.
In fact we probably turned down all of his enthusiasm for this time.

What could have we done better?
We have probably (and I’m guessing) failed to realized that this birthday was very important for him, he wanted to do something bigger for him.
We thought we could do the best, but we didn’t.

I still wonder if in these cases it all went wrong because we were selfish, because shit happens, or because sometimes people don’t “get it”.
I still don’t have a clear answer on this