The Cost of Inaction

~ Veselin ~ 6 Comments
Daily writing prompt
Write about a time when you didn’t take action but wish you had. What would you do differently?
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The one time I wanted to buy Bitcoin at $1 and didn’t. I made a mistake.

I believe it’s usually better to make a wrong decision than to not make any decision.

For example, I didn’t have access to a PC until I was about 17. As a result, I made an uninformed decision when choosing a university and ended up studying accounting. I got my first computer for my first year there. By the third year, it became painfully obvious that I had made a mistake because my entire life revolved around Internet but it felt too late to switch because I was close to graduation (it was 4.5 years in total). Do I regret it? Not really. I took a wide range of courses in accounting, finance, financial control, math, statistics, marketing. Years later, I applied again to another university and studied the right thing. Looking back, that bachelor’s in accounting turned out to be surprisingly valuable in my software engineering career.

But the post is about the cost of inaction. Here are some points:

  • Both in personal and professional life, if there’s a problem and you don’t address it, it gets worse
  • We’re more likely to regret the things we didn’t do than the mistakes we made trying
  • If you don’t do that thing, the competition may do it first, and better
  • Fear rots our brains. We rarely fear inaction. We fear action and change

Rather than a summary, have this encouraging look by the little Song thrush.

Lorna Shore

~ Veselin ~ 7 Comments

Some songs just click.

I first experienced that in high school, when a classmate gave me his walkman and let me listen to Master of Puppets. It happened many times after. Styles varied but I would instantly know when I hear something and it clicks.

The song below relates to Metallica the way Rage Against the Machine relates to pop music but it does have a little bit of both. If all of that made you a bit curious, headphones on, lower the volume, and press play. It can be too much even if you’re no stranger to metal.

Scott Berkun on Values

~ Veselin ~ 11 Comments

Talking about values and virtue signaling is easy. But sacrifice is hard and often unobserved. We don’t get as much credit from others for living up to our values, as we do for merely proclaiming them on social media or t-shirts.

— Scott Berkun on his Substack blog

Scott Berkun is an inspirational writer. He worked on the Internet Explorer team between versions 1 and 5. He also lead a team at Automattic, an experience he documented in the book The Year Without Pants: WordPress.com and the Future of Work.

I keep writing about kindness and using every opportunity to treat people well. His post resonated a lot with me because it challenges a thing I value highly. Kindness usually costs little, requires no sacrifice, and can be visible. Scott Berkun says this is not a real value. Even worse, promoting kindness as a public statement could be like wearing a patriotic t-shirt.

This is not a new idea but a new point of view that hasn’t crossed my mind before. The Bible has lots of quotes that give a definition of good, and the lack of publicity is a common requirement.

But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret.

— Matthew 6:3

For example, is it a good thing when you hand free iPhones to strangers for views on YouTube? It costs something so it checks the first requirement but is done in public so it doesn’t check the second. Same with pretty much any act of kindness that’s done for views or shared on social media.

I need to think more about this.