Our plastic faith

Wars, hunger, revolutions, political parties, organisations, corporations, jobs (9-17 working hours), vacations (21 days per year). schools etc.
This is our world.

Jobs, houses, cars, vacations on sandy beaches and straw umbrella cocktails.
These are our valuables.

(really?)

Life, love, happiness, family, friends.
These are our real valuables.

Bare with me...

So we saw that society fails.
We as an Alzheimer society, cannot reach that utopia we dream about. But most importantly we all want.

We feel it, we know it can be better, but somehow we fail. We want peace, but we have wars, as if "somebody else" is doing this. We have riots and protests against governments to, basically, change the process to have a better life.

Yet, we keep changing governments and changing methodologies and wars and hunger still happen. Some countries do better than others, sure. Better wages, better quality of life. But still... it feels like trying to stop the waves in an ocean.

Let's go micro. You and me, we want to have a happy life, yet, an average person, works 8 hours a day, 1 hour lunch, 1 hour drive to and from work. 8 hours sleep. Which gives us 6 hours in total, to live. To appreciate life, to love, to be with our family and friends.

Is this what we worked so hard generations on end? Really? If you were to describe your best case scenario of living life, is this what you had in mind?

I'll go on a wild assumption here and say that most likely no, you don't see this as an ideal way to live your life ;)

So why is this still happening? Why are we wasting most of our lives doing stuff that is not in synch with our core deep down values?

Well...

Because we created false values. Work ethic, democracy, politics etc. these are emerged theories that are built on a population of creatures which still have the instinct to hunt, feed at all costs, kill, steal and... be free..

So why did we do it?
To survive! (or at least it all started from that)

I go to work to survive. It puts food on my table yes, but I also get to pay my mortgage, i have my car, i eat at my favorite restaurants and i'm able to buy straw umbrella cocktails on a sandy beach once a year.

We learn in school subjects that help us be a better "worker".

Remember that, not a better human being, but a better worker. So that you can get a job, that pays well enough to allow you to afford food, shelter, and the umbrella cocktail. And of course, to help society survive!

Our society evolved, just like mother nature evolves. You block a river, it will find a way to flow. You starve society, it will evolve into a form that will allow it to feed.

But this society is not mother nature, no, it's created by us, humans, and it didn't have enough time to evolve in that utopia we all dream of.

Because society as an artificial mother nature forces us to accumulate wisdom gathered throughout generations that pushed our technology to a level that ensures us a better life style. Life style.. LIFE STYLE not our core needs and values. You don't really love your sofa, or your microwave. You love your family.

But you see, loving your sofa is a byproduct of society's mechanism to keep us alive.

Sounds weird right?

Society was formed to help humans survive better. We grow food, we created a place for everyone when money was invented, so that you can have access to everything through money. Even tho you sell sofas, you can buy food for your family.

So you can basically eat, because you have money from selling sofas. But you need to make that sofa worth selling. So.. do you love your sofa?

No man, you love your family!

These are society's values but not human values.

It's our own society's values that drives the wars.

We fight each other for resources, land, wealth. All of which drove at some point the survivability of a country. If you ask any person, if they need a war, they will say no! We're just human, but the values and core living gears in our society have nothing to do with our human values.

Because one is artificially created, a plastic mother nature and the other is real. Our real feels and our real lives.

Putting extra hours at work will not give you more time with your family!

It is a plastic faith, we've created, to survive.

Ok, but then.. what is real?

The subjective aspect of life.

It's not the car you drive, the money you make, etc. It's what you feel. Our whole society is based on survival, and none on the spirit, or inner self or your soul or your emotions (call it however you like).

There isn't a class in school that teaches you how to look at a painting. Or how to listen to a song.

Our courses are on materials that are critical to human existence from a survival point. When we notice this, we start working harder so that "my kid will have a better life". Does the phrase: "go outside, live your life! you're young!" ring a bell? I bet it does, your standard parent advice. Because they've realized that after you will grow up, you will work your entire life.


The thing is, we learn these things to survive. We cannot afford to have our school years wasted on nonsense, expanding our philosophy, because you'll wake up at 30 and you will starve!

So now you see.. we all hope for a better future, where we are happy. But we learn how to survive, not how to be happy (or.. how to be human?)

You learn English so you can communicate better. You learn math so you can build bridges that help society deliver food and other people to their jobs that ensure our house warming, our garbage collection.

We're so focused on survivability that we absolutely denied our necessity for .. happiness. We advertise our umbrella cocktails because it's a deliverable of the society's program. But society can't sell you your joy of being with your family and friends.

I'll give you a couple of examples.

Let's say i lose my job. I lose my job and i'm devastated. And i tell you guys that i'm devastated, thati  can't pay my mortgage that i lose my car and my home, that i work a shit ass job barely surviving. Would you be sympathetic ? maybe.. maybe just a little though. In the end, i can do better, i can pick myself up, i can start again, it's not the end of the world. is it? I lost some of the artificial values created, i just lost my umbrella cocktail, not my parents right?

So let's say that a loved one dies. Would you be symphatetic?

It doesn't matter what job you have, what field you work on, if you eat or not tonight. We all know, that losing someone is a tragedy. Because it's driven by our core human nature. It's a core value of being human. It's not about having a car that makes you human, its your emotions.

And this my friends it's what life is all about (well to me..). And if we ever build an utopia it has to be built around this. A government that is not built on wealth and money but on these type of values.. (need a word here)

Let me put it this way, if survivability will no longer be an issue, we can evolve "naturally' in an utopia. By naturally is by following our instincts and our human-nature and we will shape our artificial society by values that are share between us all and we all strive for.

The ants are awesome. They live short lives, gather food, create a nest for their queen. There is no revolution among them. Because their queen is their core nature given value, which they follow blindly and are happy to follow.

Our world has almost always had wars, and always was looking for utopia, but we never reached it because we never had a common goal. Religion tried that and did quite a good job, up to the point where multiple religions showed up and some were contradictory, and "the book" never got a v2.0

Religion is focusing on the spirit. This is why it's so easily understood. If take a leap of faith here and we go past the "magic" it's something worth living for (or dying for even for some people).

I myself i'm an atheist, sometime i really envy religious people because they share that common goal.

Coming back to my point, it's the core of the humans, the spirituality that we all have, yet we never expand on, due to the factors mentioned above, that is our core common value.

I believe that a society built on these type of values will prevail. Where there is no room for corruption, as happiness is a one-way street. When you have shelter, food and no aim for constant plastic wealth, we'll probably work together in the world.

But we are mortals.. and we have Alzheimer, and we just can't get into that point where survivability is not an issue anymore. And we keep propagating these artificial values to our future generations, because we need to live. And until we fix that, we won't see our spirituality, our core value, our ant queen.

There is an ant queen for humans, make no mistake. We just don't have time to praise it.

Peace.

Mistakes?

How about them mistakes eh?

As i got older and older.. i learnt more and more. Both in my career and in life.
Collateral to this, i began to assign myself values i believe in and to push away "flaws" or "defects" that do not match my values.

It all seems good and sane, right? I mean it's good to hold on to your values, continuously improve, learn from mistakes and teachings.

Yet..

I also noticed "mistakes" in other people, maybe fundamental flaws i totally disagree or flaws i learnt to grow past them.

It is that moment when i notice them, that i make a stand and i point them. And don't get me wrong, i try to pass back my a-has on them not just finger pointing or playing the blame game.

It is that moment you can pinpoint the reason to a crisis, or the source of a misfortune and who made what mistake and when. When you "KNOW" what the mistake is.

And in this exact moment.. i learnt that i am wrong....

My journey in life has made me to make good deeds and bad. To fail and improve, to reach a point where i am not by far perfect, but i am working on it. I am probably still making mistakes and i will make them in the future.

SAME AS THE NEXT PERSON!

The fact that i notice certain "mistakes" does not make me a better person, or a more mature one, or a more experienced one.. no..

These people are on their own journey. Their life moved them on a certain path with good deeds and bad. with failures and improvements, with life lessons that may or may not match mine. That may or may not eventually reach my values..
They are not wrong. They are not flawed. They did not make my mistakes.. they make their mistakes and are evolving just as i am... but on a different road.
A life adventure journey, that leads us to being a leader, an artist, a politician, a father, a mother, a friend or a criminal.

You match your values you get communities. You match your "journeys" and you get harmony. I feel that it's so fundamentally flawed to judge any misbehaviour, how can you tell what created that man? How can you be so sure, that he was able to embrace the same values you have, by living a different life? You CANT!

They do the best they can with what was given.

I don't believe in bad people. I don't believe someone is out there just to watch the world burn. I think we all have the same ideals in life, but it's our context, life journey that shapes us and our values.

Think about it: one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter... who are you to tell the difference?

I think we're lacking that common set of values written somewhere that we all agree that we should aspire to have. The church tried to do this (i'll cover my view of the church in another article) but it just doesn't stick in the current society. Ants and bees manage to do this though...

And so, this lack of common ideal, creates a mismatch in the values, a mismatch in the life journey that lead to fundamental core values that do not click across the communities. See Europe vs imigrants. Why is it hard for them to integrate? Their values revolve on a journey that you and I have only read about. How can you as a european, how can you possibly imagine how it feels like to lose your home, your friends, and take whatever you have left and seek a life in Europe. You can't just be empathic with that.. you are not qualified to understand them. You are qualified to empathize with people that shared your journey and values.

I just stand and observe. Actions that people do. Some i agree with some i don't.

But now, whenever i notice that "mistake" I just try to realize, what has lead that person to that action, what are his/hers values, what is that person's journey. And with a sympathetic smirk, I'm thinking: "i don't feel you bro, but best of luck in your adventure called Life"

In my ignorance i saw people i strived to be like and people i didn't want to become. I work to be better in a way that matches my values and i work to move away from values that i don't embrance.
But in fact, each of us has it's own journey. A flaw, mistake that one may have, might just as well be a flaw mistake i had, or a totally different flaw mistake i had but in the past. I overcome it. They will too.

We're all on our own journeys, threads to learn and evolve. But our paths cross and we reflect the people against our values. Which is also known as judging. But that's just a person on a journey.. safe trip mate!

So how about them mistakes eh?

PS: Did my life journey just got a level-up?
Peace

Our Alzheimer Society

Our world is full of drama.

Wars, hunger, global warming, discrimination...

And you would think.. that the society.. by now.. it must have grown past it right?

I mean we had thieves before, we have them now. We had wars before, we have them now.

So why don't we "evolve" already? What's keeping us?

It's simple. We're dying.

The short life we have, gives us too little time to evolve.

Bare with me..

We are born. We have the first years of our lives in a nurturing environment, to grow healthy, and prepare for the first initiation phase of our short lives: School.

Once we've graduated, we know a little bit about a little bit, and we may also have some life lessons (not all good unfortunately..)

We can't grow past the greed, because "i need to leave my kids a better life for when i'm gone" so you try to gather more and more.. before you die.

We can't grow past our defense mechanisms. Mother nature has programmed us in such a way, to behave, learn and adapt as best as we can given a life span of.. <<average human life>>. Yet our society ideals are way past what mother nature had in plan for us.

We don't see the world as our "Country" because our lives are too short to sort large scale problems. We only sort out the nearest challenge. Be that: a mayor, a president, my house, my neighborhood, my kids.

Because the altruism required to build or invest in a future for all, requires a sacrifice that basically says: "you will not have or see any improvement in your life, but the world will be a better place". Sounds noble and we all "agree" but deep inside.. we don't. Someone on the other side of the planet will eat because i will sacrifice myself is not rewarding (it's cruel, but if you don't agree, go sell your everything, start from scratch, and donate your money). We don't help the beggar because: "it's not ok to encourage them!" (which by the way i agree also.. what can i say.. i have yet to evolve past this too..). We close our eyes. The beggar dies eventually. NOT MY PROBLEM!

(not to mention that this type of altruism requires a giant leap of faith, that my sacrifice will not be in vain - in today's society most likely it will)

Same with the wars, hunger, global warming.

We need resources for My Country! not for us all, but for MINE. It's important that ME, I survive. Not us.

The biggest problem for us is that we are mortals, and it takes a much much bigger man to evolve in this lifetime to be able to tackle the BIG problems.

Now back to our Alzheimer Society...

As i grew, i never believed in the "listen to your elders". Whaaaaat? what do they know? they lived in their era, not mine, they have no idea!

Well.. they do. It takes a certain experience with life, to be able to draw valuable conclusions. (not all elders though become wise, but you'll have the best chance of getting wise advice if you ask an elder..).

My grandmother told me: "think before you act" i was like "yea yea.. whatever". Next thing i know we have a professional course in our company, which if i could summarize would say: "think before you act". She died. As i was remembering her words, and i had this A-HA.. i started to back track.. what else did i miss...

Some elders know. Some elders are able to have the overview and understand certain aspects of life. Their experience is invaluable.

But we die..

And our knowledge gathered after so many A-HA's, and after so many mistakes and lessons learnt is lost.

We keep what we can in books, and get kids through school, trying to promote that peace we ourselves did not manage to establish, in the hope tomorrow will be better.

This is why, in my other article "You can't cut corners", i insisted on saying: "it's ok to FAIL" because you'll get their A-HA's sooner. Ideally we would like to jump to level 100 and be a fully geared human. But we just know the theory, yet we're so far from the practice...

We as a society, learn, then forget, then learn, then forget again, and this all over again. It's an Alzheimer society.

The phrase: "history repeats itself" it's self explanatory all of a sudden...

Our biggest enemy is time.


No, i don't have a happy end to this story, but i do believe that if we get to a certain point when humans will be able to "live forever" or live way longer than we do now. Our society's problems will disappear.

Sure others may arise, but i am too young to know that now.

Peace

Leadership 101

I can't remember when i had my a-ha on this, but if you want someone to behave in a certain way, you yourself, have to do it first - also known as the one line t-shirt quote: "lead by example"

Preachers won't last long.

To prove this, i won't give you an example, instead I'll ask you to think of a leader that you appreciated, that you look up to, and one in the opposite corner, the leader you don't want to be. Now, take the phrase i wrote above and see if it matches.

What is leadership for me? It's not giving orders, directions, overviewing or being responsible for the overall project. It's inspiring the team, keeping them focused on the same thing you are, having the same joys on success and ambition on failures.

Joys on success. If you don't enjoy the wins with the team, you'll become an ivory tower leader. To put it simple, when there's a go-out, chances are you won't get invited. (I myself still work on making time to enjoy the wins.. i'll deny the hypocrisy here, and say that i'm a recovering preacher on this one). I'll quote what i've learned on a leadership training as well: people tend to remember the spikes in a relationship. Make sure as a leader you don't let the good ones pass by.

Ambition on failure. I think the easiest game to play is the blame game. It's a natural human behavior to escape punishment at all costs. I think this is when a leader really has to step up.
Bad sprint, under delivering, upset client, production bug, application went down for a whole day, and the list can continue. Sure we need to ensure this won't happen in the future, but it's critical that in the hard times, the team feels they have a leader to steer. During hard times, things can easily go south. The common ground the whole team should be on, is: we can recover!
Not who's to blame, not my job, not my fault, i saw this comming etc. No! We'll recover and we'll make it better.
If you manage to sell this ambition in the team, i think you'll be that inspiring leader to look up to.



A good way to keep the team working together is to have the vision, transparent. A phrase, an icon, a set of values that are emphasized etc.

I'll quote a lead i've read once (might have not been the same word for word): make sure the project's end result is what we all work for!

So i've worked on a large project once, a financial product, massive product. The company did follow these rules, they had a phrase they were using to keep the goal common, but they felt empty (at least to me):

The end result for that project was to deliver a high quality service to the customers, and to provide them with relevant information.
(i've rephrased it not to give away sensitive info)

Did i lose you ? are you asleep already? :))

For the average developer of course this is massive bull crap.

Business: Yo, developer! Do we build quality in our products!?
 Developer: Hell yeah sir!
Business: Yo developer! Do we promote innovation and continuously improve?
Developer: Why every day i may say!
Business: Yo developer! Do we provide the most relevant information on our product??
Developer: Only the best!

:)

These questions are like, if you answer them different than the above, you'll probably get fired! :))

If you've worked on a project, any project IT or other, you know, that each project has it's own challenges! And some are not so easy to fix. Setting silly project goals like that will just promote a religion in the company of never challenging the leadership.

What if i were to rephrase this goal to click better and get the people to literally work WITH the business to achieve the SAME goal, felt be everyone?

I'll give it a shot, and bare with me, it's not about the words or how marketing or business phrased it:

Our project's goal, what we will try to do here, is to improve our code, that may or may not be perfect. To try and build the best user stories we can, considering the business requirement and our existing platform. And let's try to refactor as much as we can as we go, just so that future work will fit better and we will still be in synch with the latest technologies, trends and patterns.

It's almost as i were giving a tour of the project to a new developer that has joined the company.

Business: Yo, developer! If we were to invest more time, do you think we can improve our product?
Developer: Actually, it will require a lot of time! Maybe we can rewrite some ?

Business: Yo, developer! How often do we revisit our frameworks to see if they are obsolete or not?
Developer: Well, not that often.
Business: And how would you see this going further?
Developer: Maybe twice a year on criticals?

Business: How hard was it to deliver the business requirements in your past sprints? Was the platform fit for purpose, or you had to put in crazy hours?
Developer: ... [dev's response irrelevant for my point here]

Do you see the difference in these two examples?

The point is, i can claim we are a team, and that we share our goal via a slide, but it's a totally different thing when you include the people that are in the same team as you, in decisions which frankly are theirs to take!

All of a sudden they'll be more than happy to chip in, as opposed to building features in a product and blaming legacy for any problems that may show.



Ok, different angle now.

So we got the team to work on the same goal, all's good now what?

I tell you something i told every person i've worked with: No matter what field you're working on, anyone can do it! EASY! It's when the going gets tough, that you can actually tell the best of the best!

In terms of leadership, this is critical. If your leader is angry, the team will be angry. If your leader is pushy your team will be pushy (well probably will take the #notmyjob attitude) and so on. It's these hard times that you as a leader have to take a stance and LEAD!

This means both when you as a team are in trouble or when you personally are.

This is what i meant via "joys on success" and "ambition on failures". It's only natural to fail every now and then. The difference is how to handle it. And this goes both for wins! If you never celebrate success, the overall feel will be "well the project was.. ok i guess. but we messed up a few times!".

I'll give you an example that happened to me a while back, for the sake of not diving too deep in the case study, i'll keep this vague. I basically made a decision for the team, that was wrong! It was so wrong that it was escalated to our management and we basically got told off.

Now.. as a leader, as the leader that made the choice, what do i do? It was the whole team that got told off, not just me. Do i push back, and side with the team? Do i side with the business and betray the team?

No.

I showed what else can you do in situations like these, lead by example. It was a mistake I made, but in the name of the whole team. So once I understood why it was a mistake, and how my decision and an impact on our project, I admitted the mistake and made sure I've shared my thoughts with the team also, and why it was wrong. We've all agreed that we'll do things better next time, and how we'll mitigate the challenge next time! (ambition on failures).

Naturally it was not pleasant, and the need to blame someone else was there and probably for everyone in the team (we've had plenty of justifications to play the blame game: "other teams do it!", "it's not that big of a deal", "there wasn't a big impact on the project! (or so we thought)" and so on).

It's your job as a LEADER to mitigate this, and keep the team focused on the same goal, and not fight the business but understand the reasons, and improve.

In our team, we've all learnt to be honest about the wins and the f...-ups. This transparency will lead to a real team effort to mitigate anything, instead of playing a blame game or doing just the required work for a task.

To my surprise what happened next, baffled me. This is the end game prize when talking about leadership material.
I really loved that team, and i know I've given this example before in other presentations I held, but here goes:

It was during the delivery of one of our projects, when i personally had a major challenge to tackle on the project (something that only one person could do), that i saw the team-work this team did. They all stood with me up till 9PM and just trying to help however they could (deploys, regression, etc), even if the actual work was a one man job. No overtime was requested, nobody even considered walking away and I never asked for their help. Yet, we were a team, that had a challenge, and we all did our best.

I was so deeply impressed by their reaction that i always present this example when i talk about leadership! Good job again guys! Excellent team that was!

I honestly believe in this one line t-shirt quote: "be the change". Whenever i tried to change something (let's not say improve, because there are so many way you can do a good job..) and each time it worked, was when i was doing it, or i believed in it so bad, that my passion for that change spread.

You want the team to be transparent? Make sure you don't punish mistakes but praise the lesson learnt!
Lead by example!
You want the team to exceed the quality output? Make sure you praise the behavior of going that extra mile for quality!
Lead by example!
You want to end a conflict? Don't engage in conflicts yourself!
Lead by example!

Happy "trial and error"-ing!

The meaning of life...

I won't make you read 1000 words to give you what you came here for: it's happiness.

That's it.

And i won't babble only on why it's happiness, but also how to do it (from my narrow 33 years old experience point of view - can't wait to see myself reading my blog when im 70)

If you think about it, it's obvious isn't it? You can shed any light you want over it, but in the end it comes down to having a happy life. Now, and tomorrow. With my family and friends. Healthy and full of experiences. With no worries or fears. Or other things that make YOU happy.

Whatever you think you're living for, in the end it's a matter of being happy.


The secret is to always remember, that this is why you live, to be happy.

So, apply a filter to every decision you make: will this make me happy? (not in a selfish way of course, because sometimes your happiness is your family happiness, or your company, or your motorcycle purring :)

And not in a short term win way (like: "smoking makes me happy", but more like if i quit smoking i'll be healthier later and more energetic and less likely to get sick - but hey, maybe for you, smoking is what makes you happy, SO SMOKE! :).

Like gym pain is actually pleasant right? (well.. not for me.. at least not so far.. ) It may be pleasant to some, as it proves you've done a hell of a workout! If that's what matters to you.


Did someone cut in line of your car? Will honking/cursing/fighting make your life any better? If the answer is no, move (your thoughts) along.

It's that moment when you react to a situation (car honk) because "he disrespected me" that you no longer abide to the "happiness goal" (oh and i'm no saint on this one, but i'm working on it :) )

There will be moments, when you feel that you're talking to a wall when expressing a frustration or a change you need to happen. BUT at times, you really shouldn't talk to a wall man.. you see, some people.. are just not worth your time.

Think of it as trying to argue with a group of 10 year old kids, that Superman is better than Batman (i mean of course he is.. if you think otherwise please go away, you and your kryptonite), it's just not worth :)

So if we take another real life example, if you really hate how someone is treating you at work, what do you do? Do you treat them bad as well? Does that make you happy? Will your life be better? How about if you ignore it, it may be an option, like just don't mind the remarks, mind your life, and the things that matter to you. It may work. If even that makes you unhappy, then, maybe this is a trigger to change something. I don't necessarily mean quitting, but taking that attitude to change things to make things better. Notice, i didn't say to hurt the other person, but to change the situation. Remember, your goal is to be happy. This may mean to find a balance somewhere, and make it work.

Let's take another example: maybe you work hard to have money to buy things. Is this "a bad type of happiness"?

NO! We are different, i don't expect my values to be share by others, yet i am trying to see the common ground on all: happiness.

So work hard, and buy those things and enjoy them.


I've met people that were genuine happy. And the values that made them happy, were really far away from mine. And they were fine. They didn't have things which i might have wanted in my life, and they didn't crave them either.

What i really hated is when i saw my parents work really hard, to get money, to be able to buy a better car, a place for us, pay the uni tuition (and i was a bad student.. my tuition was huge.. ) and all for what? I was really watching them struggle every day, and i just couldn't understand why they were doing it.

Well.. for them this was all for us (me and my sis). This is what made them happy, and it still is.

So if you take all your one line t-shirt quotes: "follow your dreams" "carpe diem" "dance like noone is watching" what's the A-HA behind it all?

Be happy.

Don't compromise for one second. You don't buy tomorrow's happiness with it, you sacrifice today's.

Whatever you do, make sure it's what you want, or at least it has a meaning, a higher purpose for you!

If you accept your bad job, your bad salary, your lonely life, your bad habits as a "given of your life", then, my friend, you are your own enemy.

Fix it! Filter things through this lens: happiness.

The simple A-HA i want you to take from this, is that whenever times are rough, or you have to make a tough decision, or others, just balance this out: "is this what will make me happy?".

Maybe helping your family will make you happy, maybe giving to the community, maybe tidying up your desk, maybe playing the guitar, it's not a one size fits all.

But if you find yourself: tired at home,hate your job, "don't have time to do the things you'd like to do (aka make you happy)" then make a change!

It's always your decisions that got you where you are now, not a higher power, it's all YOU!

Life's really short. One line t-shirt quotes won't fix your happiness and neither will this article!

Go fix it! NOW!

PS: I hope you like my images, i'm really struggling to make this blog look better and find the right images to add for the context and feel. My design skills ... well.. let's just say i'm still looking for them :)

Peace!
D

You can't cut corners

It's ok to fail

It's ok to be insecure

It's ok to have complexes

It's ok to be rude

IT's ok to get a reaction from those around you

THATS HOW YOU LEARN!

Like the A-HA, you wont do shit if you don't really understand the problem. If someone will say "Man, you always overreact! Stop it!" - is he right? am i overreacting? i didn't feel i am, why should i listen to him?

If you do listento them,  and most of us do, you'll just be super self aware of situations and context, consciously working on your behaviour, was oposed to a natural subconscious apporach to the same situation. (most likely oyu know charismatic people that are really in their element when you are actively/consciously working on that element)

You can't cut corners in life. Sometimes the way to learn is to actually make that mistake you feel comming.

I'll give an example:
Somebody tells you need to be more efficient in your work, better technical overview. Is that true? What about your other strong points that lead you there? Why pursue a path suggested by otherss..

We live our lives lately guided by one page quotes, best practices and 7 step programs to guide us somewhere. But it won't stick, because we don't get the A-HA, because we try to be "more confident" by actively being aware, but in reality you'll cover 10% of it by reading (and this is if you consciously follow directions)

How about, don't be confident. How about go to that meeting and be yourself. You'll mess it up! You'll get bad feedback like: "man you didn't prepare at all, don't you write your notes on paper??", oh, notes on paper, got it, there's my a-ha. If i read a reader's digest version of how to prep for a conference, i'd have 100 things i need to be aware of and won't ever be able to follow them.And most likely i'll forget about the "write your notes on paper advice". But when my feedback came, in a hursh manner, boy i tell you, i'll remember that, subcosnciously!

Nevertheless, advice is good. In terms that it point you to leads you have to connect yourself.

I'll give an example: grandma sais,smoking is bad. Is it bad? No! i fucking love smoking, i miss everydayof it. Yet, i've quit. Why? Is it because grandma told me? No. Becaus ei realised it on my own, but then i clicked my reasons with what i've been told and all of a sudden their points make sense, and their experience matter and you get to listen more actively to "your elders" or whatever you want to call it. It's the moment when you've matched the leads you've been given around you to the experience and your own a-ha's and that my friend, is a lesson learnt!I guess it's that moment in time when you realise you say the same things as adults say: "maaaan.. kids these days.. " :)

I'll give another example. I always wanted to stick to the gym. I wanted those abs and healthy body. I started by saying, i'll go to the gym when i quit smoking. I didn't quit, so i never went. Then i read about suplements and all that jazz, so i bought 100$ worth of powders to get fit, which of course were thrown out the window. Then i actually went to the gym once. I gave up the next day. Then i went again and i had an accident. Then i read the "how to stick to the gym" article, bla bla, i wont bore you but it's the usual jazz you always hear. Make a schedule, reward yourself, set minor goals etc. It doesn't work for me!?!? i'm lazy as fuck, i don't have a schedule for my life and work you think i'll do it for the gym? Sure maybe the first day, then i've probably lost the schedule all together.

Then i had my first lead - not the thing that made me do it but a lead i clicked later - It was Elliot from youtube, some guy asked him what keeps him motivated to go to the gym and he said (long story short) : "i don't have motivation man, this is WHAT I DO! monday wednesday thursday, i go to the gym... like you have to go to work, that's whati do! I go to the gym! Can you come have a drink with us on Wednesday? Sure! After i comeback from the gym, it's ME not a thing i do to share on facebook ".. And i clicked the fact that every gym guy i know.. just does it, no questions, no motivation, they don't give speeches on how to stick to the gym (at best they give you sarcastic feedback when you give up).. so i reflected why can they do it and i cannot.. humm...

Anyway.. In a different article i read i found another lead: "whatever you attempt to do, keep trying.. you'll get better" so i tried that on purpose. Mechanically, i didn't believe iin it but i gave it a chance.

So i went again to the gym, this time with a personal instructor. I managed to go 3 months in a row! Never missed a session. Results were visible. My whole view has changed, i understood how important "GOING" is, as opposed to one time, giving up etc. I understood why having a good posture helps oyu not injure yourself.

I gave up again due to reaosns i don't deserve explaning, let's just say i failed again. But, deep down, now i KNOW, how i can get those abs. I'm back in the gym now, and i hope it will last, I have become indeed one of those i only read about before that looked forward to going to the gym.

If i fail, i'll do it again. Better!

Point being, im not telling you how to go to the gym. I'm telling you that all your advices are just leads. You and you alone have to connect the dots. Either by doing and clicking, or by failing. Whenever you fail you automatically do a retrospective, and you see what you've done wrong. Don't expect you'll cut corners in life by reading this article!

Go out there and be yourself, make mistakes, don't stop making mistakes because other people tell you to, stop making mistakes because you understand them!

If you keep at it, you'll make less and less mistakes! In the end... you'll do it!

Peace out!
D

Your everyday A-HA !!!

Brief
Challenge everything, don't take any information for granted, look for the core substance the author is trying to sell and build from that on. If you don't click you'll learn mechanically and wont help you in the long run.

Most trainings and courses rely on what i call the "triangle method". Where you get a really nice image that exposes a theory via visuals. That is because once you got the A-HA behind it, it's really easy to derive and to find alternative ways of sharing that idea (via visuals, rhymes, analogies etc). But to your audience, initially they'll just see a triangle, and will have to backtrack your steps to get finally to the A-HA!. Wouldn't it be easier if we had the core up front and then waltz together to the final triangle?

Think about it, if you were to explain the field you are an expert in to someone, could you do it? Do you need to re-study? Most likely not. Why not? Because you got the core A-HA from it, which makes it candy to pass on.

Core
I want to touch a couple of examples and concepts, see below:

• Agile/SCRUM
• Leadership training
• Design Patterns
• Good trainer, Bad trainer
• Recipe learning, real learning
• Complex domains

Agile/SCRUM

I've worked agile for a while now, and i've seen it work. Still, i've also seen it fail. By analysing the failure, i couldn't stop thinking: "well.. it failed because they didn't do that and that". I was always wondering, where is that point when you fail. I mean, in each situation it seemed obvious what went wrong when you backtrack it.. so why did it go wrong. Following the principles, surely you could fix it no? 

The reason it went wrong, is because it was applied as a recipe and not as a principle. The agile methodology is quite simple: you adapt to your environment as you progress. If someone sais "well you are doing it wrong because you have too many meetings", by all means, don't have so many. Tweak what works for you. 

There are some guidelines that were proven to work in some contexts, but don't take them literally. I've had teams that did two daily stand-ups, that skipped retrospectives that had little to no planning. And that is fine, the core value is to adapt and keep the value coming to the client. Of course each decision was justified in some way, so that you don't lose key values that those ceremonies added, instead you get the value by other means. 

Example: two dailies allowed the progress to be accurately shared with the client, whilst keeping the day to day goal tracking off their scope. Point is, you adapt. You're agile. Why force a rule?

Here are some online criticism i've found (Dark Manifesto), and let's see why is that happening

We are uncovering better the only ways of developing

Does this smell like recipe approach? Who enforced a single way of developing? There are some guidelines, but you can write your own. 

I won't dwell too much on this subject, the point is: if you learned via a recipe versus a core a-ha behind it, you're going to have a bad time. 

To make this clear, an agile approach on a project may even state: "Agile is not for me in this project!" See the Cynefin Framework.

Leadership training

Our company has grown quite a lot. To keep up with the growth a new approach to leadership had to happen. One that could scale. So, we've received training on the matter. Ranging from emotional training to managing different types of people to bringing out the best in people to career paths and so on.

It all sounds excellent, however, it assumed the fact that the new methodology would be embraced equally by everyone. Now, before i go any further, i have to say that these trainings are reaching out to your core principles and values. How you tackle a tough situation how you react and how you express your views. So this was not like a technical training, but actually it changed the way we think. I am doing my best here to move away from the "brain wash" phrase, but bare with me. 

There are two aspects i'd like to explain to you on this. 

One aspect would be the challenge i had to make on the approach. Like, why should i change the way i think, and why to this particular implementation. There are several others out there. Why this one? It's more than learning C# over Java.

The other aspect was around the fact that we were given "tools" to apply this. These "tools" were presented in the form of "triangles" (yeah.. i know) and 4 quadrant diagrams, and graphs and so on. To enable us to easily access and implement the flow. 

I have to say, i have a problem with "triangles". I've started this whole blog to try and share my "a-ha"s by moving as far away from them as possible. Nevertheless, these guys (the trainers) had a history behind them, so you have to admit that maybe, just maybe there is some truth behind it. 

So i started research, on how other companies scale, and what are their means, and what is their framework, and specifically why is it ours different. 

This is where i got my first A-HA. They all more or less say the same. Ok, so the approach we were given was not in terms of substance, but on how we chose to apply it. Think of it in terms of flavors. For example, every leadership approach out there states that "yes, there are different types of people", it's just that our approach chose to adopt a particular vocabulary versus another when describing them. 

Ok. Got it. So the material is good. It's been proven out there. It helps me be a better man, regardless of what i do. So sure, i have the buy-in on them now. 

Then i began reading a bit more into the approach, on the best way to pass feedback, good and bad. On how to help grow each person whilst helping the company. How to actually build that win-win relationship. 

Once i got that. Boy did the "triangle" made sense. 

On the flip side, i attended another training, held by a different company, which was not so good. To give you a better contrast on why not i'll state my concern: 

The training was around feedback, specifically the bad type. A long "triangle" based presentation happened, at the end of which we were given cards, which stated "steps" on how to give feedback. (you can imagine the excitement i had when i saw them... )

So i challenged the trainer. "I am a line manager for 5 years now, and from what i know, i gave my feedback pretty good. Can i try without looking at the card, to pass the feedback (it was an excercise we had to do)? And then we can compare"

Which i did. The feedback came as "your approach sounds good also, can you now try the recpie?". For the sake of the excercise i did. It was something similar to trying to get a mechanical engineer out of his shop on the double, and set him up to hold a speech to a large audience and win votes. Horrific, clumsy, it had that certain feel of ... fake.

The problem was,  i was following their advice: "use the card!" (aka don't think/feel). So i applied a recipe, which i didn't believe in, a blind approach to a real problem. It was not the best training i attended.

I do accept that it may have some science behind those steps written on the card. But as long as you don't share your insight, your a-ha, it will NEVER work. 

If i were to give that training, i would have went for "what is it, that I use, when providing feedback, to maximize the results". Why am i doing certain things over others, not how, but why. Once that clicked, the card would have been a redundant material.

Design patterns 

I promised myself to keep this side of the blog non technical, so i'll do my best to abstract away the details.Of this story.

There's a certain way to structure your code, to have certain benefits. Whenever i hold an interview, i never ask: "can you explain the repository pattern", instead i leave the candidate to walk me through a few design patterns he chooses. I need to understand not how the pattern works, but how did he understand it. Because from his baseline understanding, he will derive his explanation. If it's a really good a-ha of a pattern, his explanation will be brief, and will be able to answer any question, adjustments, disadvantages, examples etc. If the understanding is around the code, he will walk me through the code syntax (not so good). If his understanding is of "the reason why i'd use this", well, from here we'll discuss the why and when not the how.

When you learn a design pattern, don't look at the code. Look at the principle, what are you really doing with it. Think of a real scenario where it would help. Then think (or do) a flow through it. Then i expect the UML will make more sense. From there, the code should be obvious, and you can have a reference code in terms of best practices, rather than the core principles. 

Good trainer, Bad trainer

I'm sure you've all attended trainigns/presentations that left you amazed and with a nice lesson. On the flip side, i'm also sure you've also attended boring trainings/presentations/articles (hopefully not mine :D). What is it that made one session better than the other?

My epiphany came when i analysed the way the session was "sold". The content of a course usually follows some best practices (intro, examples, workshops etc), so i doubt it's the material to blame. However, the way this material is sold, what key elements are emphasized makes a difference.

Like in my previous example, in one training i was given the end result. The recipe i had to work from, as opposed to understanding the principles.

Same goes when applying to a job, and preparing your self for it. You can read the material, see the code etc. Or, you can try to understand the concepts. Specifically on the design patterns, why is this an interview question in the first place? What are they after? Start from there. Then you can see that in certain domains, certain patterns help (because of reasons you'll have to understand on your own - aka find their a-ha). And then you'll have a better view.

Recepie learning, real learning
The trainer and the trainee chose how they'll teach/learn. You can recipe learn, and in some cases this works excellent (environments which have to follow complex protocols and routines that guarantee a certain outcomes - building a computer from parts) but when the work requires you to be "creative", that's when a recipe learning will fail you.

For example, in the software industry we refer at times as "over engineering" to some implementations. When people follow a certain complex pattern, which covers a lot of areas, but is not needed in the context. The approach most probably cost more, and was applied blindly. Instead of building what's needed for a client. This is where "you have to think". And your experience list of "a-ha"s will make the difference.

I personally try to move away as possible from any recipe. I challenge everything when it's presented to me. Yes, but why? Until i understand the concept and reason behind, i will always challenge it. (Oh and trust me, at times this lead to tough conversations). However, once i have the buy-in on a certain design approach, or value shared etc. it's no longer a service providing activity, but more of a team effort to achieve the common goal.

Complex domains
So, the question still remains: but how do you tackle complex domains? Where you can't just really go: "Ok, so if i want to study C#, what's the underlying A-HA i need to kick off from?".

In complex domains, i see it as a divide et impera approach. Any piece of software (or any other complex context for that matter) is usually composed of several bits. Each bit, having it's own sub bits and so on (if it were easy, everyone would be doing it and it would be cheap). So you'll need to break it down to a level you have an understanding of the "a-ha" that will allow you to derive the context. And move to another area.

This is why, no matter how smart you are, experience is sometimes ireplaceable.

There are several ways of approaching a complex domain.

Bottom up: as in, take small key concepts and break them down until you got their "a-ha", then move to others, up until you get the "component"'s bigger picture and so on.

Or, there's the top down, where you get the final complex domain, and create a map of what you need to understand to be able t deliver. Not every bit has to be understood end-to-end. For example when i'm building a website, i don't really need to understand how my data layer's internal mechanics manages the information. I just know, to a certain level, that it provides me with certain features and certain limitations, has it's strong points and it's weak points.
I personally prefer this approach especially when dealing with large projects.

So if you were to build ebay from scratch, what would you need?

• marketing knowledge
• coding knowledge
• etc.

And dig deeper. 

But if you were to pass on a project (of any nature) you've worked on, a complex project, how would you go about to pass it on? I'm 100% sure you own it, and you can talk about it for days, but to actually make it stick, you'll have to focus on the key "a-ha"s to shorten the time needed for the trainee to get up to speed.


The A-HA of this post
Each lesson/article/blog/presentation is based on some previous research. The form it's displayed is a concentration of information to make it "easier to remember" not necessarily "easier to understand". To understand a concept you need to understand the core, the a-ha of it. Once you have that, the course materials will be just confirming and providing analogies for the concept.

When learning, look for the underlying a-ha. When passing it on, focus on the a-has and work your way to the "triangle" not vice-versa.