Maybe it is a bit philosophical and pretentious but I thought it was interesting. In many ways, it is like the antithesis of Stranger Coding Tings. For example, my blog is about thinking about past grudges, and venting frustration at things I can’t change.
Check out the full blog here:
Simply posting a link probably wouldn’t be that exciting and entice you to read it, but pasting the full article is just plagiarism – so I’ve put together a summary from the opening lines in each section as a compromise:
1. Resentment
Harboring resentment or anger toward another team member can be a significant source of unhappiness.
2. Not living in the past
Don’t dwell on that job that you didn’t get or that project that went bad. If we live in the past, we are doomed to repeat it. As developers, we need short memories and one of the best ways we learn is through failure.
3. Cooperate with life
The Serenity Prayer asks us to accept the things we cannot change, change the things we can, but also have the wisdom to know the difference.
4. Stay engaged with the real world
As developers, it’s easy to withdraw into our own world. It’s often a reclusive profession, and without even trying, we can have very little interaction with others. But humans are social creatures.
5. Love yourself (and others)
Programming is hard and don’t let anyone tell you it’s not. The problem is coding is a technical skill and there are rock stars and ninjas, and there is the rest of us (I’m in this camp). We must have empathy for ourselves and others as we move around in this profession.
6. Be virtuous
As engineers, we live in a highly technical environment so we think that gives us a pass on virtues like love, compassion, and empathy.
7. Lower your expectations of yourself
Shoot for the moon, if you miss, at least you will be among the stars. We’ve all heard this a million times, but, as I said earlier, coding is hard, so I am going to propose that we cut ourselves some slack and don’t expect so much. Just by virtue of our chosen profession, we are overachievers and we make things doubly hard when we expect to progress too fast.
8. Serve something bigger than yourself
Self-centered and narcissistic people are the least happy people on the planet. The happiest people have found some balance between serving and caring for themselves and serving their family, their co-workers, and those in their community. I once heard someone describe the three pillars of human happiness as fulfilling the need for meaningful work, the need for lifelong connections, and the need to serve something bigger than yourself.
Stranger Coding Tings 