Because some things never change

Some tips for how to get through darker times, by speaker and coach Birgitta Granström. (FTBM)

Always keep moving. Stay active no matter what happens. Failure can easily lead to that fear of the worst becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Seth Godin, talks about how a few people with courage will win over many without courage any day.

The iPod came from two people, Steve and Jonathan. The Zune came from 250. Which product would you rather own?

Which one would you buy?

A nice piece on taking responsibility for your life, by Leo Babauta.

There will be some among you who will admit that it would be nice to slow down, but you just can’t do it … your job won’t allow it, or you’ll lose income if you don’t do as many projects, or living in the city makes it too difficult to go slowly. It’s a nice ideal if you’re living on a tropical island, or out in the country, or if you have a job that allows control of your schedule … but it’s not realistic for your life.

I say bullshit.

Take responsibility for your life. If your job forces you to rush, take control of it. Make changes in what you do, in how you work. Work with your boss to make changes if necessary. And if really necessary, you can eventually change jobs. You are responsible for your life.

If you live in a city where everyone rushes, realize that you don’t have to be like everyone else. You can be different. You can walk instead of driving in rush hour traffic. You can have fewer meetings. You can work on fewer but more important things. You can be on your iPhone or Blackberry less, and be disconnected sometimes. Your environment doesn’t control your life — you do.

Who’s controlling your life?

Marti Barletta, from her “Strengths” essay in What matters now.

I worked on my weaknesses for 40 years to little avail. Still “needs improvement,” as they say. Why? Easy. We hate doing things we’re not good at, so we avoid them. No practice makes perfect hard to attain.

I, for one, can live with just doing what I’m good at!

In the 80th Stack Overflow podcast, Joel Spolsky discusses why consistency is necessary to get a great product. He is commenting on the suggestion that you continuously look at the top customer requests for your product and work on them.

That sounds like a particularly bad version of design by committee. [...] You’ll never get an iPhone by asking cell phone users what they want, that’s how you get Windows Mobile, if you just sit there adding features, and adding features, and adding features, and adding features, and adding features. If at any given time you take the top 10 features that people want and you’re working on them, you never gonna get a phone with one button on the front screen and that’s it.

From What matters now and the essay “Thought-mindedness” by Steven Pressfield.

There’s tremendous power in putting your ass where your heart wants to be.

Just do it, already.

Let’s say you are interested in something. You might read a lot on that subject, you think about it, maybe even talk to other people about it. Perhaps you write notes about it, underline words or sentences in books or magazines.

If you recognize yourself in this, here’s my suggestion for you. Don’t just write personal notes about it in a notebook no-one will ever see. Create a simple blog and post your thoughts there.

Now, most likely, you can give me a long list of different reasons why this would be a stupid idea. No-one would ever read it. You don’t know enough about the subject. You don’t have enough time. You are not a good enough speller. It would be embarrassing. People might see it and think you’re stupid. The list goes on.

Do you know where all of these excuses come from? The resistance. Your lizard brain. The part of your brain which is desperately trying to keep you out of danger, to keep things as they are, to be safe. It is your number one enemy to making your life better. It doesn’t want things to be better, just the same. It’s safer that way.

But if you really think about it, does the excuses above really hold water? Would no-one ever read it? Well, if no-one would, then it doesn’t hurt publishing it anyway. You don’t know enough about the subject? Well, if you’re interested enough in it to study it (which probably is more than most people are doing), then you most likely know more about it than most people. Maybe there are people who know more about it than you, but that doesn’t matter. You don’t have enough time? Just keep it simple, and publish the notes you are writing anyway. Would people think you are stupid when they saw it? Well, what if they did? People who think you’re stupid for sharing what you are passionate about aren’t worth knowing or caring about anyway.

In fact, a number of great and well-known blogs have been created this very way. Jeff Atwood, creator of Coding Horror which is arguably the number 1 blog for programmers, has the following to say on why he is blogging.

Mostly for selfish reasons. I needed a way to keep track of software development over time — whatever I am thinking about or working on. I research things I find interesting, then document my research with a public blog post, which I can easily find and refer to later. Hopefully other people will find these posts helpful, relevant, or interesting.

So, if you have passion for a subject, don’t keep that for yourself! Share it with the world, and you might very well notice that you learn even more from it!

Dale Carnegie, American author on personal development, hit a home run when he said:

Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.

Teddy Roosevelt, the 26:th American President, said:

Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure… than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.

I’ll jump into computer science for a second and quote Grady Booch in a response to a letter “The Relevance of Architecture” in IEEE Software (Volume 24 Number 5).

Every system has an architecture; some are accidental, others intentional.

Are you living your life or is your life living you?