2021 July. Stress and Family Time

I have a two-week vacation in the last week of July and the beginning of August. Nothing spectacular as we're stuck at home, but it's at least a little break from the routine.

Books I'm reading #

No changes from last month. I'veIv'e been reading more articles recently.

Books I've read #

I didn't finish any new books recently, but I've got many impressive articles I can recommend.

Updates #

I've updated my post about meditation and added When Buddhism Goes Bad to the disclaimers.

Elsewhere on the Web #

Why Behavioral Economics is Itself Biased. This one is a must-read if you've read Thinking, Fast and Slow – Daniel Kahneman

Lighting the Brain. A fascinating history of optogenetics.

Goals #

I'm getting more and more cynical about outcome goals, and the reading here is the order of posts I can recommend if you're thinking about goals for yourself and others.

  1. How Goal Setting Can Do More Harm Than Good
  2. The Stretch Goal Paradox
  3. The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up every day

But, I don't think process goals are everything. I wouldn't call the missing part a goal. Especially not in terms of OKRs. But, we need something to motivate and drive our process goals. What if we use vision for that? I find it helpful when I think of some outcome I want to get, but unless it's a trivial thing, I need to spend a lot of time planning to get it. Outcome goals don't help me with that, but process goals are instrumental.

Burnout / Work #

On working too hard: finding balance, and lessons learned from others

This is epic. What's Wrong with the Way We Work. Worth reading.

Yes, I'm linking to this twice. The Stretch Goal Paradox. It's worth it. Take a look.

The Job Status Cycle. This one is more fun unless you will feel offended when you find your job title there. ;-)

Tech #

The Human Cost of Tech Debt

We lost the war. Welcome to the world of tomorrow.. The 2005 predictions for technology and security that I recommend revisiting.

Mitchell's New Role at HashiCorp.

Mitchell Hashimoto takes on a new individual contributor role at HashiCorp.

I've found it inspiring to see a founder going back to the individual contributor role. Worth taking a look—especially if you're a developer.


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