Category: Thinking

A Sleep Trick for Computer Zombies

~ Veselin ~ 1 Comment

I have slept more over the last year. My average has increased from under 6 to over 7 hours, and though that’s not Nirvana, it feels better.

My morning routine is fixed. Kids go to school, and the alarm clocks go off at 7. So increasing sleep time can only be achieved by going to bed early. But how so? The former self would play games, code, and watch TV shows or YouTube. Some of these can be very addictive and I would often go to bed after 2am, setting myself up for a difficult morning that would not work without caffeine. Coffee can disrupt sleep even further.

Then I found a saying somewhere, perhaps on Reddit, source unknown:

If it’s not worth doing first thing in the morning, it’s not worth doing last thing in the evening.

Would I start the morning with the next episode of Halo? Hell no. Why am I staying late for it, shut it down. Would I read that book in the morning? What about another game of chess? You only need to overcome each of these urges once, then it’s defused by default.

The quote stuck with me and I rarely stay after 12. Feels better.

When do you feel most productive?

~ Veselin ~ 1 Comment
Daily writing prompt
When do you feel most productive?

Productivity is like a flower, it needs nurturing and dies if salted. For me, the fertilizer is knowing the meaning of work, how to do it, being on a good team, and feeling enthusiasm.

I feel most productive in the mornings, late afternoons, and early evenings, and least productive after lunch.

A risk to regret

~ Veselin ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
Describe a risk you took that you do not regret.

I’ve noticed that the two most common sources of regret for my last 20-30 years of experience are:

  • Missed opportunities
  • Coulda/Woulda/Shoulda thinking when a disaster strikes and I didn’t see it coming

The risks taken that paid off – what would I regret? For example, when taking my first mortgage, it felt like a great risk. The payment was a significant portion of my salary at the time, the period was long, and the apartment we bought was not great but we couldn’t afford anything better. The interest rate was high, and the seller had some non-disclosed debt and some people wanted their money back. It ended up fine, we renovated the property over the years and resolved the issues. Turned it into a home.

When I take a risk that doesn’t pay off, I also seem to not regret it if it was a deliberate informed choice taken without influence. I stopped insuring my previous car for theft and accidents. It got stolen. The saved premiums for 3 or 4 years didn’t cover the loss of value. Did I have regrets? I didn’t. I made a choice based on the amount of time I lost each year to deal with things like paint damage and vandalism. Covering the cost myself would’ve been cheaper and quicker than going through the insurer and the police on every occurrence. The same happened with previous vehicles, none of which were stolen. It didn’t pay off last time but I felt zero regret because it felt like it was an expected, although unlikely result of my math.

Most of the time when I felt regret, I didn’t see the negative outcome coming at all even if there were obvious signs in retrospect. For example, I played basketball. A second later I was on the ground with a dislocated knee. I didn’t see it coming. Lots of coulda/woulda/shoulda followed. However, the outcome was predictable, and the risk was taken when I agreed to play with unfamiliar clumsy kids. I blogged about bias, assumptions, and intuition, a couple of times this year.

Saying “No”

~ Veselin ~ 3 Comments
Daily writing prompt
How often do you say “no” to things that would interfere with your goals?

Over the last decade, my goal has been to not shoot an immediate “No” to things. “No” used to be my default. The things can be opportunities, they deserve to be evaluated. “No” is easy. Nothing changes, it’s conservative. “Yes”, however, is the sun breaking through the clouds. It can be hard. So, instead of saying “No”, I think about it, evaluate it, and try to make it work and to see its purpose. More often than not, it turns out that it makes sense.

Of course, this is a generalization that applies to my life. In case the thing is, “Let’s jump over the North Pole with a parachute”, still an immediate “No”. Okay, actually, can we make it work somehow? How are we getting there? How much does it cost? How do we travel to the North Pole and back? What about polar bears? Yolo.

How does failure lead to success

~ Veselin ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success?

I saw this writing prompt days ago and wanted to share a clever story about how I failed miserably at something, and then it turned out to be okay. However, I couldn’t come up with a good enough story, or even any story. No matter how I twisted it, it sounds like the things that lead to anything remotely positive after a failure were related to:

  • My response to it
  • Having a contingency plan that worked

Regarding the planning part, I pretty much try to make sure that I know the revert command and when I need to run it (or the real-life alternative of revert if it exists). It’s not impossible to fail and not know you did, especially in engineering. A user may report a critical bug weeks after the introduction of it. Bug reports are like cockroaches. By the time you see one, you may already have an infestation.

Regarding the response, I’ve had more chances to develop a strategy. Respond with dignity, take ownership of the failure, and deal with the consequences. Don’t blame others. Try to be objective even if that means putting yourself in a very bad light. When the failure was caused by someone else but it is me under the spotlight, I try to not blame the person but depersonalize the mistake. We can blame a commit for a critical bug, for example, rather than the person who deployed it.

And a couple of sayings:

  • Fall down seven times, get up eight.
  • This, too, shall pass.