In a 2018 interview in the American television program “60 Minutes” the ex-Beatle Paul McCartney said: “…it is embarrassing I do not read music or write music … I do not see music like that … I do not see music as dots on a page, is something in my head that goes on…” (He … Read more

The gist of it I invested in the hardcopy of this book some years ago. It is one of the few books in our library that has highlights both from myself and from my wife. Back then, I was drawn to this book because of the subtitle “The disciplined pursuit of less.” – Oh, yeah. … Read more

29 years ago “Attention is like energy in that without it no work can be done, and in doing work it is dissipated. We create ourselves by how we invest this energy.” Flow: The psychology of optimal experience, 1990 – Mihaly Csikszentmihaly 9 months ago “Productivity Isn’t About Time Management. It’s About Attention Management.“ NY … Read more

It seems to me that for us, digital worker types, there are two different ways to invest our attention while working: (1) Keeping on top of things (2) Creating and solving. Both modes are needed, and both modes drain our limited daily attention budget. How much attention we will spend in each mode will depend … Read more

I read once that unclear writing is the result of unclear thinking. I agree. In addition, I found this true about communicating ideas in general, writing code and the design of user interfaces, among other things. So, if I struggle to put anything clearly to others, this is just a symptom that I failed to … Read more

In one of the large enterprise sales deals I was involved with, I ended up participating in dozens of calls over many months with the organization buying our software. Now, a long battery of pre-sales calls is not unexpected in these large deals, but in this case the process became quite long and nightmarish. We … Read more

The following are the two most seductive distractions that get in my way when executing an idea. Seduction #1: Another idea This new idea could be related to what I am doing right now, or a totally different animal. It could be an idea for a new video game, a book, or a better stopwatch; … Read more

I used to believe in a ‘hard’ view of software development. I insisted that the developers we hired were ‘engineers’ and I used a lot of mechanical metaphors. To me, it was pretty much a binary affair. Building software was like building a car or a rocket; many hard, cold parts that fit together optimally, … Read more

The gist of it At 126 pages, on which I highlighted 27 passages, I definitively found this book densely packed with good stuff. I will re-read and refer to it again in the future for sure. My TL;DR (too long; didn’t read) assessment: Worth reading end-to-end. No skimming. The premise We are subject to tremendous … Read more

I am a realist, but regardless of accepting that many times we make compromises, I stay vigilant when I accept those quick-and-dirty solutions. Because this proposition always delivers two things: Quick + Dirt Quick is delivered and then forgotten over time. Dirt is also delivered and stays there forever, until you clean it—and this cleaning … Read more