I once heared that change takes a quarter to implement. You need a first month to implement changes, second month to sustain & consolidate them and third one to start seeing the benefits. I am also constantly amazed how often I keep rediscovering same shit over and over again :). Its almost like to break old patterns of thinking or a routine and to install new ones you need constant reminders. Daily and weekly, you must revisit them to remember. And sticky notes do not work! They blend with the environment very quickly and that Aha! moment is lost. You constantly need to rediscover forms in which they still ring the bell otherwise they fade into some memento that has no transforming value anymore. So keep rediscovering same old, same old, there is nothing wrong with you, change just takes time, patience and different forms of looking at the same thing to last. 

Objective requires unbiased repeatable structure that has positive track record. No I am not talking about trading, I am talking about life. Our day to day perceptions of reality are only our observations. Biased with our past experience and contexts. If you take aristocrat, fireman and programmer and ask them what they see when they look at the bowl of fruits, you will get different answers. At very high level you will get similar description of the objects (two appled, three oranges, one pineapple), but the moment you go into the field of emotions/perceptions you get something subjective (too many or too little, fresh or expired, like or dislike) but each of them will consider it objective. We all create our subjective reality based on our experience and try to persuade others that our subjective reality is the main objective reality. Lets just accept that others have their reality and want to tweak theirs reality in order for ours to be in better balance. By accepting there is nothing like objective reality we will free ourself of right or wrong and become better, more relaxed, less egoistic human beings as a whole.

We do many things to please others in order to feel good about ourself. To get others approval. The root cause is our inner insecurities. Waking up the true hero inside us is understanding the motives behind our actions. When you give a gift to people you love, to a certain way it is a selfish act. You expect that thankfulness for the gift at the deeper level. So what if no appraisal comes? No thankfulness? Are you gonna be disapointed? Sad? The reaction of the other person to your gift is totally outside of your control. Are you gonna be angry, sad, frustrated? If you will, your motives were probably wrong. You expect to give and your satisfaction should come from the act of giving (inside of your control), not the act of receiving (outside of your control). Understanding the motives why you do certain things gets you closer to your inner peace. We just need to be aware of it.

Since caveman and tribes, we have always been living under constrains of not being fully authentic. If head of tribe disliked you, your likelihood of being mispelled from tribe meant almost certain death. So you tried hard. You know what is great about today?! You dont have to be part of any tribe to survive. You can truly choose to be authentic. And what does it actually mean to be authentic? To live by values that every man should cultivate. It also means choosing the right people and right profession so you can live by those values. And you are right, you have to be picky, but to be authentic is truly worth it!

You are energy complex. I have been repeating this mantra on this blog over and over. Love as well as hate are both energies. So powerful that memories you associate with them can be stored in your body for the rest of your life. Whenever your thoughts are dark and your mood is sorrow, just bring the feeling of love out. Encapsulate all the darkness with that energy. It might sound a bit hippie but for those who have tried it they must have noticed that love is truly a superpower we have every moment of our lives at a tips of our neural pathways. This superpower can truly beat the darkness, just bring it out and let it shine on the darkness. 

My appologies to woman readers. This is targeted at man. For those man who are living in cities, our levels of testosterone continuously drop. It is my rationale which I have partially realized standing on a huge field in the countryside far outside of city feeling the vast amount of space around me. While standing there, that vast open space was whispering to me: “explore and conquer”. When I arrived to the city, I felt that everywhere I look there is a constrain. You have to go there and not there, you cant do this, you should think that. You wont even realize it and within moments you are boxed in and you are held by balls by constrains. That open field felt like I was alive and for a moment I felt like I am microdosing testosterone. That I was build to explore and conquer. So as long as I will be living in the city, I will be looking for opportunities to microdose my testosterone levels be it standing on a vast open field or holding strong cold metal bar while doing pullups. Being closer to the roots that has been formed over last millions of years unlike cities which are with us for couple thousands years it definitely wakes up something in me.

When you manage people and you want to truly build meaningful relationships, you need a degree of emotional inteligence and empathy. Empathy gives you ability to be more attentive to contexts and circumstances of others. By good attentivness and tuning in to others, you can create environment in which others can perform at their best. So why is it the double-edged sword? If you have high EQ, you are on one hand good at tuning in into other people, on the other hand you are like a sponge for all disappointments and emotional imbalances of others. You constantly need to calm polarized situations and conversations, constantly trying to keep your cool in the name of higher management good. You can very easily get yourself over time into this emotional rollercoaster where EQ both serves you and do you harm. There is no simple way out. The main way out is to live this life only for periods of time and live through it when stakes are high and its really worth your efforts and time. Otherwise you are risking burn-out and all kind of health problems. So no pain, no gain is a truthful statement but just make sure the gain is high and pain will not last too long until it will have damaging consequences. 

I like the quote, “There is nothing to writing: all you do is sit up to typewriter and bleed” but I dont believe you can just force it by willpower. I dont believe in willpower as I used to, I belive in why (your motivation) and approach that make sense to you that are long lasting fuel sources to your willpower. What I have particularly realized over the last 12 months is that “approach that make sense to you” sometimes takes time to build. Lets say you wanna do X but somehow you keep failing. You are blaming your willpower for that but that is wrong approach in my opinion. If rational motivation is there, its about trying all kinda of different approaches towards that goal/routine you want until it clicks and you suddenly dont need any artifical willpower, its simply there naturally and actually rather then taking you energy, it gives you one. So the answer is, don’t bleed, don’t force it, just show up and try it differently until it makes sense to you!

Any pain is temporary. Any setback is a learning if used wisely. Most of the time, half of the pain we are facing when meeting with adversity is our psychological/emotional extrapolation how things will be bad also in the next moment, without knowing nothing about the next moment, about future. This emotional paralysis and wishes of pain to go away are bringing actually even more emotional pain to already difficult situation. Good reminder every time we face adversity is to remember that we are exactly where we should be. Of course after the setback is over, we can learn from it but really, when we are in the actual moment of adversity, rather then fighting it at the emotional level (which produces even more adversity in my opinion) is to lean into that moment and live it. I know it is hard but it is a great practice everyone can get better at including me and a good reminder that in this universe, at this very moment, at this place, there is no other way then this setback and we are exactly where we should be.

Project management in software development is a bitch. As a manager you suppose to be responsible mostly for things that are outside of your control in highly intelectual domain which is changing faster than most of other professions. All variables for constant failures are present. Add to that naive stakeholders that want to deliver things they are not capable of articulating that have never been done before in your context with ever changing teams. Project manager in this instance is not a manager, but illusionist that has to create smoke and mirrors and hope, that this time he will be right because honestly, he can only manage things to certain extant. His biggest weapon is communication. By communication he can hold together only the known variables and for the rest he must create illusion that he has things under control with all RACI bullshit, steering summaries, communication boards and strong statements. If you are that type of masochist who likes this type of pain, go for it. Better advice is, choose another profession that will bring you more joy.