Continuous Satisfaction

No matter how easy we make things for ourselves, there will always be some way it could be better.

Things are almost never exactly the way they should be. Once we are accustomed to the unachievable pursuit, it's easy to fall into the trap of only noticing what you don't have.

If you add a new layer of tests, you're likely to notice that there's another way you could make your pipeline more strict. If you speed your pipeline up a little bit, you may create an appetite for making it go faster. If you fix a design flaw, you might find that another, more subtle flaw becomes apparent.

It's good to notice those things but sometime's it's also good to stop and remind yourself of what is going right, what you have accomplished...what is better because you touched it.

I have no ritual, ceremony, or process for this. I just try to think about the things I have achieved whenever I get frustrated with the as-of-yet-uncompleted tasks in my life.

Hard Work Doesn't Always Pay Off in the End

I had a coworker who used to always say that lazy people were the best programmers. Her reason was that we don't like to do anything twice.

I think she was right that good programmers often look lazy. I'm not sure that the reason is what she thought it was.

When we bump up against a hard problem, most people have one of two impulses: Give up or try harder. Both of these approaches are unlikely to succeed - although they do both succeed more often than I would have guessed. Often, when you run into something really difficult, the best expenditure of time is the one that makes it a little easier.