Tag: advice

“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.

Learn how to tie a bowline knot. Practice in the dark. With one hand. For the rest of your life, you’ll use this knot more times than you would ever believe.” – from Excellent Advice for Living

I like this advice, not because I use this know a lot, but because there are things you should be able to do in the physical world, and some self-reliance and ability is handy.

For the record I do use bowlines regularly around the ranch, but we use some horseman’s slipknots (manger tie) and square knots more.

In my life, there are small skills like this that get used over and over. We still live in the physical world, and not only are physical skills useful, but there is a lot of satisfaction from being able to accomplish something yourself.

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.

In 100 years a lot of what we take to be true now will be proved to be wrong, maybe even embarrassingly wrong. A good question to ask yourself today is “what might I be wrong about?” – from Excellent Advice for Living

In this age of AI, which is an incredible disruptor, it’s interesting to think back about past changes. I heard someone recently compare the AI revolution to the change from assembler to C (high level languages). That’s interesting, but I think it might be even more impactful.

And I’m a little worried.

In any case, 100 years ago we were in the boom of the stock market, the roaring 20s. The teletype was in use, people thought after WWI that life would be amazing and we’d never go to war like that again.

I can’t imagine 100 years, but I have been skeptical of AI, especially writing good code. At this point, after more testing, I think I was wrong about AI being a disruptor for tech. With advances in robotics, I truly worry that AI might cause serious challenges for humanity.

I hope I’m wrong.

In terms of databases, I constantly think relational systems are the best all-around store and a good choice for most work. I constantly ask myself if I could be wrong. I don’t think I am, but I keep asking the question.

It’s good to ask yourself this type of question. Have those strong opinions, but loosely held.

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.