Tag: advice

“The foundation of maturity: Just because it’s not your fault doesn’t mean it’s not your responsibility.” – from Excellent Advice for Living

I’ve worked with a lot of people who are growing and learning into something new. This could be with my kids, kids I coach, or people at work. Often when we’re learning, or we attempt something in our jobs, we make mistakes. Sometimes those aren’t our fault, as some external factor might impact our effort.

However.

I’m still responsible for things. If someone doesn’t produce a good query and slows the system down, I still might be responsible if it’s the system I am managing. If a junior DBA doesn’t check somethings clients complaint to the lead DBA (me), I am likely still responsible.

I find people often conflate these things together. You might be both at fault and responsible, but in my mind, you should feel responsibility more often than you look at fault (or blame). If someone on my team messes up, it’s often not my fault, but I still feel responsibility. After all, we’re a team. That’s what a team does.

Don’t avoid responsibility. In fact, take on a bit more than others might want. Don’t be responsible for everything, but just a bit more than others would. It’s great advice that helps you stand out, and often, succeed.

I’ve been posting New Words on Fridays from a book I was reading, however, a friend thought they were a little depressing. They should be as they are obscure sorrows. I like them because they make me think.

To counter-balance those, I’m adding in thoughts on advice, mostly from Kevin Kelley’s book. You can read all these posts under the advice tag.

“Don’t aim to have others like you; aim to have them respect you.” – from Excellent Advice for Living

This is an interesting piece of advice. It’s easy to look at this and think, no, that’s not what I want, but remember that these two things are not mutually exclusive. People can respect and like you. However, for many things in life, you really want respect more than link.

When I coach, respect is more important. At work, respect is more important. In relationships, they’re probably equal.

Respect means that people listen to you, treat you well, give weight and consideration to your words, actions, and feelings.

I like some people, but don’t respect them. I might enjoy spending time with them, but our relationship is more for leisure and fun. We don’t really have anything of significance between us. We can just enjoy time.

Your goal is respect.

I’ve been posting New Words on Fridays from a book I was reading, however, a friend thought they were a little depressing. They should be as they are obscure sorrows. I like them because they make me think.

To counter-balance those, I’m adding in thoughts on advice, mostly from Kevin Kelley’s book. You can read all these posts under the advice tag.

“On the way to a grand goal, celebrate the smallest victories as if each one were the final goal. That way, no matter where it ends, you are victorious.” – from Excellent Advice for Living

I believe in celebrating small things. I am a big “smell the roses” and “celebrate your success” even if the bigger part of the success feels like a failure. If I deliver a good demo in a talk, or one of my players makes a good hit/pass/etc., let’s celebrate that. If the rest of the talk wasn’t smooth and people are confused, or we kept hitting the ball in the net, that’s a bit of a failure and something to work on.

There’s always a bright side and a dim side. One is likely larger, but both are there.

I think if we look at something in black and white terms, and reduce it to success or failure, then you create a psychology that you win or something wasn’t worth doing. The sports teams, the musicians, the friends I have, my kids, we aren’t defined by whether we win every time. We can’t be the best all the time.

Even the best of the best isn’t the best most of the time. Tom Brady (7 rings) and Michael Jordan (6 rings) might be considered the best at what they did. However, they played more years (Brady 23, Jordan 15). Were they failures those other years?

The Beatles had 19 #1 albums, the most of all time. However, they released more. They had lots of #1 songs, but plenty that didn’t get to #1. Were those not worth doing?

Celebrate your success. You might write a great query, but ultimately there are plenty others that don’t perform well or some might even return the wrong results. Hopefully you’ll fix and improve those, but celebrate the things that go well.

Work on those that don’t and turn them into victories later.

I’ve been posting New Words on Fridays from a book I was reading, however, a friend thought they were a little depressing. They should be as they are obscure sorrows. I like them because they make me think.

To counter-balance those, I’m adding in thoughts on advice, mostly from Kevin Kelley’s book. You can read all these posts under the advice tag.

The greatest rewards come from working on something that nobody has words for. If you possibly can, work where there are no names for what you do.” – from Excellent Advice for Living

I work for a software company, trying to sell tools to companies for database work. It’s not hugely rewarding. I enjoy it, and I like going to work. I like the colleagues and customers, but this doesn’t fill my soul.

I’m an average person and while I’m good at what I do, I don’t make huge differences. I make small changes, both at Redgate and while coaching. The latter is way more fulfilling to me. I coach at a small club, not the top one, we don’t make news locally, but I help and watch kids grow up before my eyes in many ways.

I love that.

The saddest thing I’ve seen across the last 30 years of my career is how many brilliant people have moved to work in finance and tech (including biotech), aiming to win the lottery with options and IPOs rather than spending their efforts on making the world better. Their focus is on clicks and trades, not bettering science, knowledge, or anything for humanity.

Lots of people do great work still, but many of the brightest of my generation and the next aren’t focused there.

I’ve been posting New Words on Fridays from a book I was reading, however, a friend thought they were a little depressing. They should be as they are obscure sorrows. I like them because they make me think.

To counter-balance those, I’m adding in thoughts on advice, mostly from Kevin Kelley’s book. You can read all these posts under the advice tag.