Get Better
Getting better is different than getting well. If you’re recovering from some injury or illness, I wish you a hearty “get well” and suspect you’ll move along soon, having realized you’re in the wrong place.
Now that all those evil, communicable folks who were here just trying to get us sick are gone…
Getting better requires a lot of things: motivation, practice, evaluation, etc. And there are plenty of books and blogs about each and every one of those. But, right now, I’m most interested in the idea that getting better requires that one realize there’s some better to be gotten. (For example, I’m keenly aware that I could get better at expressing the idea in that last sentence.)
Have you ever woken up one morning and realized that you’ve been in a rut and haven’t been getting better? Yes? Good! That means you have the ability to recognize that there’s better out there. Now you just need to apply what I hereby dub “continuous betterment”. Think continuous integration meets Stuart Smalley.
10 (this will make sense later)
Get ready, I’m about to ask you a series of questions and I ask that you answer them rapid-fire. No stopping to think. No getting back to me later. If you can’t think of an answer, skip to the next question. Getting the answers all right isn’t the point…just trust me… Ready? Go!
Quick! What could you be doing better right now? What could you have done better yesterday? What could you have done better in the last chunk of code you wrote? What could you have done better in the last client meeting you had? (Faster!) What nagging “I could have done that better” feeling is in the back of your mind right now? Who could you talk to for a few minutes tomorrow to gain some understanding of something that’s been bugging you? (Almost there, push!) What could you read over lunch today that will prepare you for tomorrow? (Just one more!) What one thing from yesterday would you do over today if you could? (Pshew!)
OK. Either you now have at least one (probably small) thing that you could go act on, or you’re perfect. So, go do it. Read the RFC for the protocol your app relies on. Go have coffee with that marketing guy who always seems to know what the customer will want next. Take 5 minutes and clean up your home directory. Spin back through your bash history and find two commands that could have been combined into one. Whatever it is…do it. Read two more sentences of this post, then go do your newly identified continuous betterment task for today. Put a mental bookmark right here so you can get back here tomorrow. Now, go do your thing and come back tomorrow.
20 GOTO 10