Articles from March 2023

Mindset

In 2022, I gave a presentation in my company to share about my experience. It is about building affective teams, producing high-quality outcomes.

As anything else in life, contexts matter. It works for me, might not work for you. We all struggle in our own ways. The key is to struggle well.

Everything starts with the mindset. Here are a few from my experience.

Changes are inevitable. Anticipate them, design to deal with them

Customers change their mind. They want different behaviors, different features. Whenever you start a project, a feature, a piece of code, keep that in mind. Just smile and say "Not a problem!" when they appear.

The key point is "design to deal with them." You cannot deal with changes from your wishes.

Ready to rework, to throw your beloved code away. You do not provide code, you provide solutions

Developers tend to treat their code as their babies. Code is simply text, a tool to solve problems. If it is not right, not solve the problem effectively, throw it away and write new one.

But that is a waste of time, of effort? Oh, then think carefully before you code next time. I usually do not accept any explanation if the code does not do the right things and do them right. Less code is better than more code.

Extreme Ownership: You own everything

As a team, we own the outcome. Everything. There is no such thing as "I am only responsible for backend, frontend, or QA." If you do not understand what "Extreme Ownership" means, ask Google. The right book, the right guy will appear at the top.

Win the war not the games

The war is the product in production. The games are sprints, incremental deliveries, phases, … all intermediate results during the development. Every sprint is a success, the team killed all the backlog items, PO/PM were happy. Boom, the system dies in production after a few days.

Every step, every decision must have "win the war" in mind, AKA production-ready mindset.

When something does not work, simplify/remove processes, and abstractions, NOT create more

Ask "what prevent us from delivery?" Usually, you will find some rocks standing in your way. Find and remove them.

I practice them in leading team, writing code, design systems.

Vacation vs. Training

Vacation vs. Training. What are the similarities and differences? Breaking them down into stages, they operate similarly but with different perceptions.

Effort and Reward. Dopamine pathway.

People do not see the "effort" part of the vacation. It is the accumulation of

  • Working hard to save money for it, preparing for the job before leaving
  • Planning for the trip
  • Headache, unpleasant experiences with the traffic, services, delay
  • Kids, packaging
  • A few other hundred things

The reward is the perception of a pleasant and relaxed destination. Whether that is a resort, a beach, a mountain, or whatever that is. After all the hustle to get there, you feel relaxed and rewarded.

Training. Well, the same thing. The reward is after training sessions. You get stronger and faster. Always have a better feeling and a better mood.

And what are the differences? The perception and the recognition of people are different. Vacations, people see the reward yet ignore the effort. Trainings, the opposite; people know the effort yet ignore the reward.

How about the aftermath? Vacations usually come with a dopamine crash. I have seen many people feeling tired on the way home. They are struggling to accept that vacation is over and tomorrow is work. Training? No, there is no dopamine crash. The effect is there within you, lasting for days.

Vacation and training are excellent activities. If we depend on vacation to balance our life, the ratio is too small (think how many vacations you can take in a year?). However, if we depend on training, we can do it daily, 100% ratio guaranteed.

Irony

At work, want to go on vacation
On vacation, work, answering emails, social media
While working, checking the phone, social media
While driving, listening to music
When not having a gym, wish to have a gym to start exercise
When having a gym (in hourse or shared in condo), wish to have a part to run around
While having breakfast, lunch, dinner, checking phone, social media
Gathering in a coffeeshop, everyone checks their own phone
Working from home, wish to be in the office to improve communication, team building
When in the office, nobody talks, everything is done via chat, digital tools
Sleepy, tire, want to sleep, be on bed, and then checking phone with social media
While drinking beer/wine/alcohol, talking about being healthy
.
.
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We simply cannot focus on the ONE thing we are doing/having.

Well, that is how it works I guess. What if I practice to pay attention to the one thing I am doing, whatever it is. The irony is that I was thinking about the irony list while I was walking down the street to buy a bottle of coconut water. Irony!