133 posts tagged with "personal"

I've seen the trailer and it has been pushed a few times in Netflix's recommendation algorithm to me, but I've yet to watch it.

It's the short documentary by Jonah Hill, with his psychotherapist, the man that changed his life for the better, Phil Stutz.

It's called "Stutz".

The following clip talks about the idea of "The snapshot / realm of illusion" where people really idealise their lives and their hopes and dreams.

And they leave out 3 key aspects of reality, which are:

1. The pain will never go away
2. The uncertainty will never go away
3. No getting away from the need for constant work.

This is not a new paradigm, in my experience, for finding peace, or fulfillment or whatever "positive" thing out of life. The person who deeply considers these realities and how to integrate it into their thinking and actions, will come away better off in how they experience and navigate life.

My post on "Goals" where I talk about "Systems not Goals", talks about how our firstly, our focus is wrong in answering the question "what do I want to do with my life?" and set goals, instead we should be figuring out if what we want to do is a destination, or state of being e.g. do we want to have a six pack? or be the kind of person who has habits and behaviours that end up having a six pack?

Because the former gets a six pack. The latter gets whatever someone who has the habits and disciplines that result in a six pack, can get.

Whatever reality we want to make true for ourselves, I think it's imperative to first answer the question of what we really want out of life? And then face those objectives with the 3 aspects of reality to dissuade ourselves of any illusions we may try to form.

The "you don't have to be technical to work in tech." line never sat right with me.

Yes, a lot of different roles in the tech space for sure, Project Manager, Product Owner, Design etc. It wasn't the "we have lots of career choices" angle that felt off to me, it was the gold-rush vibe of rushing people over here cos the money was/is good.

Gold rushes are dangerous for those who don't know how gold rushes work, and don't know history.

As much as I want more Pasifika in technology, I understand like with any demographic, this industry may not be that interesting to you, so it's gonna be a teeth-pulling experience at best if that's you.

And here's the thing, you don't have to come to tech. It's an option, yes. Check it out, see if you want to exchange the effort for reward, if that reward is for you, your family or community- then by all means.

But understand how this gold rush works, and then prepare for the lessons from history.

best regards, dot-com crash era.

I started reading "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck" by Mark Manson last night. I've known about this book for a while and know plenty of people who have read it.

Fear of criticism stops a great many people from doing what they want to do. If it wasn't for this fear in the way, they'd be living the life they want, enjoying the things they enjoy, and generally having less coping and behavioural issues to compensate for not being able to do what they wanted to do.

Mark explains, in a humourous way, how to live a life free of fcks randomly or stupidly given for things that really don't deserve a fck to be used on.

As with most great advice, it's only worth something in it's active form- you have to practice, build and develop this ability in order for it to be any use. It's literally no use just running in your head, knowing you shouldn't give a situation one of your f**ks and then you go and do it anyway.

A good friend gave me this advice to help with my own fear of criticism, he said "do more of the things that scare you".

The only bit I would add onto that is to then treat any feedback you get from those things, positive or negative, the same way- don't give a f*ck about them (basically).

Sure, you're grateful for the feedback, thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed it, I'm sorry it sucked for you etc, but equally and the same, it doesn't "matter" to you.

And so you do more of the thing you wanted to do, because you enjoy it and it's fulfilling and you're a better, nicer, less assholey person. And you realise that's the only thing that mattered all along.

"Systems not goals"

to summarize James Clears philosophy from "Atomic Habits". Daily habits and routines that push me towards the person and things I want in my life. And not the focus on far away destinations that I someday hope to reach.

We announce things in the future, "this is coming" or "I'm working on this". But what about what's happening now? What are we doing in the meantime?

We're all familiar with the cliche "It's about the journey, not the destination" but announce goals and don't say much about the daily challenges, routines and wins that accompany the journey.

Maybe it's not exciting enough? Maybe we've gotten the dopamine hit from announcing the grand thing?

I thinks it's the difference between announcing "We are going to win the championship!" and "We are going to hit the gym and train every day!". One looks like an awesome destination, a goal to be excited about. The other one sounds more like "work".

But you can have the second one without the first. You can't have the first one without the second. Maybe we should all get more excited about the work and not the goal. Because we know the committing to the work always pays off.

Even when it doesn't result in the goal.

I heard "I don't deal with office politics" in a podcast yesterday and I hear this often.

Even more interesting was they were talking about what some people find attractive about contracting, other than the money. Saying they left permanent roles so they didn't have to deal with office politics.

I believe this either misunderstands what office politics is, or misunderstands to what degree you can just "opt out" of it.

I went back to University as an adult student after some years working in tech, so had lived this office life quite thoroughly.

In one of my management papers on "organizational behaviour and management", I was surprised to learn that office politics will affect you whether you choose to engage with it or not, and that it was best to be aware of it and manoeuver accordingly.

And this made sense in my experience in the office, dealing with not only my team, but the relationships between teams, managers, all the way up to senior leadership and the mission statement of the company.

When I decided to go contracting, my sensitivity and awareness of the office politics dynamic needed to be even more heightened in order to manoeuver effectively. I don't just get to "opt out" of it in some kind of naive sense of control and security.

Of course, this comes with maturity, self-reflection and seeking to understand the things that we don't like, or make us uncomfortable, so that we're working with the world as it is, not how we'd like it to be.

I have plenty of thoughts on controversial topics, I'm just not arrogant enough to think I can manage handling it on as public a scope as the internet.

The conversation you can have with your close friends, verses your acquaintances verses people you've just met are all very different and require an increasing level of "handling" so as not to be misinterpreted, misunderstood or altogether misconstrued.

If you know a person well enough to understand a broad range context about them from the outset, so that the things they say make sense to you without a lot of "scene setting" or definitions, clauses and disclaimers being made, then a conversation can achieve a lot without expending a lot of energy to "walk the same mile" together (so to speak).

Now imagine having a conversation with someone from work. They know you well enough, but not that well, so your choices are you limit the topics of conversation to areas you both well know about each other, and the work is light. Or you take on more controversial topics and "do the work" (of fail to) to best understand each other and not have things go sideways.

The difference between someone who knows you; someone who "sort of" knows you, and then people further and further away from you on the internet (geographicaly, politically, philosophically etc), is exponentially "increasing in levels of context to manage" difficult.

And I think a lot of people don't fully realise, appreciate or respect that.

This isn't to say "stay in your lane" or "don't share anything on the internet", the internet is an amazing tool for discovering and learning new things as well as contributing your voice and thoughts to the public discourse.

Just remember the infinite levels of context that exist, and that with great power, comes consequences.

"We suffer more in imagination than reality" -- Seneca

Steven Pressfield writes about "Resistence" in his book 'The War of Art' and talks about how powerful this force is in stopping you doing the thing God (however you imagine it/him/her) has put you on this earth to do.

Why do we resist? This topic has been documented a thousand times over, in every self-help and productivity book you can think of going back many years. But we're still here. Talking about what stops us from doing the thing we want to do, we love to do, or often times we need to do.

For me the forces that plague me starting a newsletter, just simply to collate my thoughts and ideas and learnings week in and week out, has been immense. Some days the thinking ranges from "it's nothing, nobody cares, get started, f**k it" to "is this really what I want to do?", "am I doing this for the right reasons?", "is this sustainable? am I gonna end up failing at this as well?".

In hindsight, ridiculous. In reality, it's very, very real.

Real? Yes. It's stopped me doing the thing I wanted to do, so even if the thinking itself is (imho) stupid, it has won out and I'm sitting here with nothing to show for it.

So how do I battle this resistence?

The same way you take on most things that seem too big to handle- you break it down into small pieces, and then smash those out until the "whole" is resolved.

My small, daily piece to smash out that will lead to the weekly newsletter?

A blog post. Every day. For 30 days.

It doesn't have to be amazing. It doesn't even have to be long. It just has to be done. Every day. For 30 days.

Let's go.

With so much knowledge and information available at your fingertips you'd be forgiven for wanting to stand behind the shoulders of giants, instead of on top of those shoulders.

In looking into personal knowledge management systems over the past few weeks, I've learned (and probably should know this by now) that the purpose of consuming all this information and knowledge from various sources, is not to then regurtitate the same knowledge. But instead to process it, taking it through your specific and unique filter and "computer", to then produce a new idea, or perspective or piece of information to contribute back to the topic.

It's a vulnerable position to put yourself in, to offer something that is your own thoughts to be examined, critiqued and possibly ridiculed by others. But therein lies the work: for yourself to be okay with thinking your own thoughts, and then sharing them with the humility of someone who's here to learn and share what they've learned.

I had a listen to an interview on Google Talks with Tiago Forte about this idea of a "Second Brain".

He has a fascinating story and reason for researching and coming up with this idea. I believe I was delving into my digital garden and reassessing what I'm going to do with it, and how to maintain it.

I've use Obsdian in the past when learning Zettelkasten, all for the ultimate goal of disseminating all the information I was interested in and reading, and consuming, and trying to find a way to have it be usesful in my life in some way.

Well, it's that season again and I'm looking at all the knowledge, information and data that is available and interesting and trying to get myself re-organised around it.

I listened to a Twitter Space with Kelsey Hightower just this week about how he deals with all the cool new, fun, interesting and distracting tech that's around us, and how he goes about building up his engineering and technical skills & abilities.

He says he picks a few skills he wants to focus on, and then commits to learning only those while being aware of the rest, but leaving them for another time.

Focus.

So, I may (probably will) take a page from Kelseys book and pick a few things I really, really want to upskill on, and focus on those for now.

I don't think that stops me reading and making notes on topics I'm interested in, but in terms of skills building, I'm going to do the focus route.

When things aren't working the way you want them to, you need to be able to take a step back and review.

Not just the thing you're working on, but you also need to review yourself.

Is this still what you want to be doing? Is this thing you're working on heading in the same direction?

Obviously you don't want to be second guessing yourself every other week, but ploughing ahead indefinitely isn't the way to go either.

Stop. Review.

Re-commit if necessary, and go.