I stumbled over the awesome “Get Involved” video by Scott Hanselman and Rob Conory the other day.They’ve put together an amazing video about getting started as a developer with an online presence, you should check it out. This blog post isn’t really about the video per se.
I have been open and committed to my desire to change. Or rather push myself to professional excellence in my areas of interest. Through this I’m creating tangible goals… so this should get me all set up, right? RIGHT!? …
How to go about change though? Given the desire to push myself to new heights and at the same time change several aspects I’ve embraced the blogosphere again. But have I started out on the wrong foot?
I’m not interested in being average. I’m out to be exceptional.
I’m not waiting to be picked. I’m actively creating opportunities.
I’m commanding my time so I can own my trajectory and maximize my impact.
“Boundary” - Something that indicates bounds or limits. Also called frontier.Most of us have heard about “pushing yourself to the limits”. It’s something I associate with performing ones very best for a given end result. New personal record at the local 10k race? Getting to market with a new product? Landing the stage 1 rocket after it’s delivered payload into orbit?
Focusing on the end result can be a powerful motivator, and also a door-opener to new possibilities, but there’s something lost there. Is it really only about the end result?
“How are you?”
A simple question that usually is followed by a polite response expressing our contentment with our daily life situation. I’ve been answering it a little differently lately: “Not so good, really. I’m completely burnt out!”
People are taken aback by this brutal honesty and many don’t know how to respond. I don’t want to make things hard on them, but I can’t stand lying to others (and myself) anymore. Regardless of peoples responses, it’s been a relief to come out in the open.
Recently I had the discussion with a colleague on how new code was being added to a code-base without maintainability in mind. The discussion was sparked by a code-review that had been ping-ponging between the reviewer and the developer where readability and ( as a result ) maintainability was an issue.
I originally posted this on the dolittle blog.
There’s a new task waiting for you in your inbox… a bug in production! Maybe the bug is completely unrelated to  code, you’ve created, but the report is there waiting for you. It’s critical, and has to be fixed “today” or “ASAP”! And with a number of consequences, like “this feature is vital!”, “support center is being called down by angry customers”, “we’re losing millions!”.
