Category: book

Do you know how to fix your bike? Of course not (unless you’re a biker).
If someone would tell you to fix your bike today, would you be able to do it? I don’t think so.

But if you started learning how to fix it, reading, working each and every day in perfecting the skill and the craft, would you be able to do it in a year? Probably yes.
In a month? Still probably yes.

In a day? It depends.

I’ve often wondered what’s different when it comes to problem solving and tasks. Some people are able to fix their own problems, some are not.
Some stops right away at the first barricade, the first bridge to cross, the bug they don’t understand, the software they don’t know.

It could be a developer, a designer, a marketer. It’s not the job, it’s the mentality.

Why is that some people do find a way to fix bugs they weren’t aware of, in softwares they didn’t develop, while others can’t fix a bug they know in a software they created?

I think it boils down to 2 things: Questions and surrender.
And while you might think you’re not in this group of people, think again.
Because you are. I didn’t find a person in this world, myself included, that at least once in a while didn’t surrender to a seemingly unfixable issue.

So, whhy Questions and Surrender?
We tend to surrender too fast. To accept failure as an immutable condition. We can’t simply go forward. We don’t have the information, the skills, the knowledge, enough practice, you name it.

 What we don’t say to ourselves is how. How could we get more information? More skill, more knowledge?

I had people come to me because they never used a software and didn’t know how to use it.
I didn’t either, yet I used it. Was it because I had some magic powers? Of course not. I simply tried, tested, learned.

The difference was not in the skill, but in the ability to question: How do I get from here (where I am) to there?

In case of learning how to use a software an answer could be something like

• Read the damn guide
• Read closely each text.
• Push some random buttons and explore the whole set of features until I find something that resemble what I want to do
• etc

In case of a bug (as a developer) the questions are still there but in a different form
* Can I isolate the source? 
* Can I remove code that removes the bug?

Even if I don’t have the skills, I can isolate the bug, find the cause and then think about how to fix it.
It might seem like an impossible task but I can guarantee this by experience: I once fixed a bug in a software I didn’t develop, that I didn’t ever see nor used, developed by people that I didn’t know and the only difference between me and them is that I isolated the problem by remove code (in a logaritmic way, but still code removal is).

We seek help too fast for problems that are too littles. It should always sound alarming when you reach out to someone, he/her doesn’t reply you and in the minutes you wait for their answers you fix the problem.
It means you asked for help too fast. 
You were lazy maybe, maybe you didn’t were confident enough.

Whatever the case, you surrender too fast. And the only way to fix this is to not surrender at all. At first you’ll fail and it might be disarming but there’s no way to learn without some trial and error.

If yoou’re a software developer you need to market your skills. If you’re a team leader you need to market your goals, if you’re a product manager you need to market your product.

You will always need to market your ideas, no matter what field you’re in. Marketing meant as a way to convince people, not manipulate them, but let them understand your point of view by removing the roadblocks created by theyr own prejudices.

And this will always be marketing, and will always need some of the techniques involved in marketing. Like understanding the right time to say things. It might sound obvious when you’re sending an email at 3am in the morning to your subscribers that it’s not the best idea.
Guess what? It also applies to real life, because timing matters. 

You’ll need also to be in the bucket of the things they want to listen to, and then you’ll need to remove all of their roadblocks. Only after this you’ll be able to speak your truth, and if it will be worth it then you’ll have changed a small part of your world.

But in all cases: You need to learn marketing skills.

That’s a sad truth, we’re more likely to listening to a new person we don’t know very much than an old friend.
His/her advices might be more well received than our friends, but why is that?

It’s not that the friend becomes instantly useless.But we are less inclined to listen to him.
There’s prejudice, we think they are saying that for a reason. And there’s the fact that we don’t really listen to them, but we’d like them to listen to us.

A friend becomes a listener, while in the beginning he was an advisor. And as such, the new, unknown person that seem skilled like our friend become our new advisor.

It’s not always like this, but to have a different outcome you have to play it in reverse. The friend must find the perfect time to share the information so that it can be listened, understood and applied.
Missing that it’s like missing the flight. You might find another one, but you’ll be late.

I don’t consider myself successful in the way most people think. I’m not rich, not famous, nothing of these things.
Yet I do think that I succeded in learning such many things.
Learning to sing from zero, to build up some basic muscles, to run, to jump rope, to talk, to write, to inspire even if for small moments people, to change diets and diets, breakfasts, learning new programming languages, and so on.

It’s not to brag about it, but to make a point about how was all of this possible.

You might think it’s because I’m good at learning and even though this might be part of the equation I think the reason is different.
I didn’t tell anyone about many, if not all, these things. I kept them for me until I was fairly decent about it.
Why?

Well, first and foremost because of the reactions many people have.
One day I wanted to write a letter to my bosses, to give them a different perspective. Why I letter? I like to write and I wanted to convey a message while they were relaxed, not in the daily rush.

I told about this and the first reaction was “you’re crazy, it’ll all go bad, why you dare do this?”.
Guess what? It went good.

Perceptions matter, and though they are part of the story that led to my idea about the letter they couldn’t be told while I was sharing the idea. It was impossible, but people react on what they know, and if they know only a part of the story they might jump to wrong conclusions.

The second, critical, thing is: We might want to say them only to pump up our ego.
You know when you say something like “I want to learn bungee jumping” and everyone goes like “Oh man, that’s wonderful, I always dreamed of it, bla bla bla”.
You get that nice little feeling that you’re the best, that you’re one step ahead, but will this imply that you’re going to do it? Nope. It usually leads to the opposite result because you’re already got what you wanted, a plause.

This leads us to the third and final element: Don’t do it for others. Don’t do it for your ego. Don’t do it for some temporary plause.
Do it for you, for the pleasure of learning, of practice, of being in a constant state of learn, fail, succeed, repeat. But please, don’t do it for your ego.

When should you say no? When a no is more important than accepting?

You’ll be facing tough times in life, there are 2 things that will put you off.

First: Some changes don’t disrupt instantly. They remove your energy one brick at a time, making you unable to change.
Think about a work you don’t love. You can bear with it for some time, but after a long time it’ll be too much.

Secondly: You have to say no and protect your borders.
Borders are all about defining what’s important, what do you care about, and acting towards that goal.
Even if it damages you, even if it’s agaist your interest, you must protect the borders as long as they are sound.

Why? It’s not a matter of ideology, it’s a matter of protecting the things you love.
You would do it for your children, you would do it for your mother.
Now it’s time to do it for yourself.