When you are accountable for your work – whether early, later, or on time – it breeds value. When you own the late deliverable, try to make up for it, people notice. When you finish early, take on more, people notice. When you finish on time, people notice. Being accountable for your work, not blaming it on the weather, other people, etc, will always breed value in not just your work, but yourself.
If we stopped designing houses, the results would be interesting. We design for a reason, we take that moment to breathe and think about a problem, stare out a window in silence, and contemplate what is happening. Any problem that has been solved well took this time to figure out the design. Yes, it’s not always fast, but it should always be good.
We’re being reconditioned right now to not think because it takes too long. I spent 3 hours this past weekend thinking about how to approach some problems, what would and would not work, and running through the scenarios in my head. I’m still running through a coding problem with AI that is encroaching on 5 hours, trying to get something to work that should just work (based on the APIs). Thinking is good, thinking is…
Because they force you to do something you’re not (at least not all of us are accustomed to). Focus and get to the finish line. When you are running, that’s the goal, the finish line – whether the road is bad, it’s raining, there are lots of people – the goal is the same: get to the finish line. And the only way to do that is to focus and move your feet. That focus…
I don’t know if there is a peak in our careers anymore. (I’m not sure there ever was, I thought you just kept learning and learning and learning). But now, if anything, I see it as climbing to the top of one mountain, getting there, seeing an even higher mountain, and having to climb back down and climb up again. What we thought as the peak of our careers is constantly evolving and changing, picking…