Category: Thinking

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.

Why fear

~ Veselin ~ Leave a comment

Fear makes you click. But does it end with clicking and reading? Found this gem on the Reader today:

French surgeon and neurobiologist, Henri Laborit (1914-1995) drew a clear connection between learning and emotion, showing that without the latter the former was impossible. The stronger the emotion, the more clearly an experience is learned.

Nescafé Japan and Imprint Theory

Triggered productive emotions also help you learn the wrong things because learning is associated with emotion. Previously wrote about this in 2018.

Do you believe in fate

~ Veselin ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
Do you believe in fate/destiny?

I think life is a game that favors people with ambitious goals. Some people may have better cards or natural advantages or disadvantages. No matter what cards are dealt, a person with a goal is more likely to reach that goal than a person without it. A person who works relentlessly to climb Mount Everest is more likely to get there than a person who plays Fortnite in all of their spare time. The Fortnite player may one day win a Fortnite tournament while the mountaineer probably won’t do it.

Here’s what I wrote about The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle on Goodreads (btw, that book was 5/5):

…excellence comes with the right kind of practice. You need to challenge yourself and keep doing whatever you are doing over and over until the brain wires properly.

Work hard. Be nice. Baby steps. Praise for effort. Self-discipline. Make it fun. Did I say be nice? Repeat.

myself

Another reason to be kind

~ Veselin ~ Leave a comment

In each instance, we readily forgive our own minds but look harshly upon the minds of other people.

I found this nice 2012 article on r/psychology about how our experience and intuition fool us into making wrong predictions. The emphasis in the article is on underestimating others and overestimating ourselves. It says that there’s no amount of knowledge about the thinking errors and biases that will make our thinking quality better but it can make us slow down and invest more effort when we recognize that we would like good results.

Not sure if the article is worth a $6 subscription but is definitely worth the read, and so is the main source for it – the book Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.