When I picked up the keyboard today I initially wanted to talk about how life happens to us, how we don’t get to decide in which adventures we’ll be in. We’ll lose at some games, win at others.

But then, I also thought about what makes us feel miserable when we feel we’re a square trying to look like a circle. When we feel that our obligations, our duties, surpass our skills.

What’s the definition of “Enough”, afterall, if there can always be something better?

How can we even do enough work, when we’re sure we can improve it further?

Then I wanted to talk about the invisible struggles and how many of the successes we see around us hide all the struggles behind a wall, in rooms we don’t have access to.

All the initial tension, the doubts, the questions, the fears. All hidden from plain sight. All managed and controlled, but invisible to the public.

In the end it’s hard for me to draw a line. Life is a mix of all these things. The complexity of our fears and thoughts, the opportunity we get along the way, and this dichotomy of the inside vs the outside.

Before the invention of eyewear (and printed paper), some people could not realize they were missing something (sight).

It’s when printed paper was invented and became widespread (news, books), that people started realizing that there was something missing for some of them.

It was then that glasses to improve eyesight became popular.

I’ve had a similar experience with sleep. I always thought I was sleeping well; I never had trouble getting to sleep or sleeping till morning. No interruptions.

From the outside, it looked great. But there was a stat on my iPhone that was always too low, “Deep Sleep”.  It was not that stat to trigger my search for improvements, but it was a rough time in my life, and it was only by accident that we landed on checking if sleep was the problem.

The thing that’s fascinating here is how many benefits I got from having better sleep. More focus, less sleepiness at night.

All these things, which are probably common for other people and that I wasn’t aware of before starting this quest.

Don’t take for granted any kind of status (physical, mental, etc), but question it because you don’t know where the “False assumption” lies (in my example, the false assumption was to think that my sleep pattern was normal).

Blogging has many forms. This blog, for example, was inspired by Seth Godin who, in one post (or maybe in a book, “What to do when it’s your turn”) kindly suggested the idea to blog.

Without comments. Blogging for the sake of writing. Without the pressure of people liking or not liking what you had to say. With no audience, with no expectations that your analytics visitors will bump.

Writing in the simplest form.
1175 posts later, I can say I both succeeded and failed. Failed because I’ve not been as consistent as I wanted.
Succeeded because, after all, there are 1175 posts confirming that it’s possible.

But we all need reminders of our goals and our vision. That’s why it was so great to read Matt’s post. A reminder to blog. To continue blogging.

Sometimes life gets in the way, and when you’re trying to keep a habit, skipping one day can make a night and day difference.
Skipping one day can mean giving up.

And, to be honest, that’s what happened (again).
Over time, I started accepting the fact that I’d skip some days/weeks of writing here. Not because I like to skip them, but because I intentionally choose to prioritize other stuff.

But, when I read that post it all came back to me. Why I was writing: To think.

To think and explore other ideas. Here you can find some really terrible posts and some decent, maybe even good ones. Some days I’m inspired, and some days I’m not. Some days I talk about interesting stuff, and some days about boring things.

I’m training. Training to think more and better, through writing, so that all my thoughts are more refined, directed, intentional.

So, cheers to writing, cheers to blogging without an audience, and cheers to the silent writers who don’t publish, either because they don’t care or because they haven’t yet found their hit. 
May we all never lose this little flame we have, this love for writing itself, even in the darkest times.

I was reading “bird by bird” and this quote struck with me:
“A critic is someone who comes onto the battlefield after the battle is over and shoots the wounded”.

There’s something true about this, when we’re criticizing that’s what we often do. The position we start the discussion is not a place of love or interested, we tend to criticize to disrupt and destroy.

I’m guilty of that, both toward others and toward myself. As it often happens: I’m my own worst critic and it’s not something I can change in one day.
But there it is, a quote that summarizes perfectly what it means to criticize. 

Here it lies, in plain sight, what your contribution to the world will be, if you choose that path, and the truth is: we have plenty of options to act differently.

By choosing a different time, by being mindful and kind, by understanding the other person’s point of view before talking, by counting to 10, by having an open heart and an open mind, by sharing the harsh truth from a different perspective, and with the intent of letting us grow.

There are lots and countless options, way better than being a critic.
Let your discussions and ideas intertwine instead of shooting them to others.

I was reading this post by DHH about Musk: https://world.hey.com/dhh/the-musk-algorithm-977bf312, and it’s interesting in many ways. 

First, I agree that it’s hard to see the things that work in such a divisive person (like Musk). We’re all polarized, and I suffer from this too.
Through many years, I’ve learned how to take the good things out of a book, even if the book was mediocre, exaggerated some lines, or expressed them as if they were the solution to all problems in the world.

Of course, there are no books like that, but it was hard for me in the beginning to detach the content from how the message was conveyed.

Applying this rule to people is even more difficult, and Musk is a good example of that.
I’m fascinated by the protocol highlighted in the DHH post because it has some hidden consequences that are not visible on a first reading.

Question every requirement.  +
Delete any part or process you can. 
I think these two rules are much more intertwined than they look. 
To me, these two elements serve the purpose of not being attached to any idea, of not being a “fan” of an implementation, but of looking at them from a distance.

Loving an idea, a solution, or an implementation is risky. You might defend it even if it’s wrong; you might, more or less intentionally, steer away from other solutions only because you feel they are not as good.

We should be ok with abandoning a project, an idea, or an implementation, but as with people, we tend to care about them and will miss them. We tend to protect the things we struggle for, but that is often a sunk cost to us.

Simplify and optimize.
Accelerate cycle time
Automate. 
These last three steps instead, focus on improving efficiency: first by reducing complexity, then by speeding that up.

Reducing complexity is an interesting topic. As a developer, I was deeply fascinated by very abstract, very dynamic code that could “do everything”.
Now I think that the simplest the code is and the more straightforward it is, the better.

Because, at the end of the day, we don’t know who will need to touch that code or in what state they’re in (maybe they’re in the middle of an emergency, and they need to act fast).

Simple code helps everyone, it’s easier to maintain, debug, and fix, and the same rule applies for processes, for features, and for plans.

The simpler, the easier to manage.
Some things are inherently complex, but even that complexity can be reduced.

For example, Apple is not yet providing a calculator on the iPad. It’s a simple thing to implement, right? But they chose not to have it anyway. This reduces the complexity (even though it seems silly, that’s what it does). Fewer features, less complexity.

Reducing features or customizations is an interesting way to simplify, especially because you can always change your mind and add them back in.