You Know What? You Are Right

I love to argue. Well, I used to love to argue. I used to love proving to everyone that they were wrong. That I knew better.

For me, arguing was almost a sport. It was like arm-wrestling intellectually.

Over time, I observed three things.

The first is I learned not all people have my patience. A lot of people would simply give up mid-argument. Not because I got my point across. They just didn’t have the patience to continue debating. This often left an awkward vacuum behind.

The second thing I noticed was that people not even involved in the argument were getting affected by it. Arguments bring tension. I never felt it, but I could tell people around me did.

The third thing is, after years of arguing, I learned it’s virtually impossible to convince most people by arguing. Ego tends to drive arguments, not facts.

The worst kind of arguments is online arguments. Why waste time and patience trying to convince a total stranger they are wrong?

My only hope when arguing with strangers is someone else reads my replies and doesn’t fall for, say, anti-vaxxer propaganda.

Arguing when I know something (or someone) is wrong is in my nature. This means not arguing isn’t easy for me. I do, however, care about the people around me. I also care about my time. So I’m practicing backing down.

I don’t have to win every single argument. It doesn’t even matter all that much if I do or don’t. And if someone says otherwise, well, we’re going to have to argue about it.

Not So Dumb After All

A lot of people gained weight during lockdown.

My wife and I didn’t. How we managed to get healthier during lockdown isn’t a secret.

Firstly, we kept a healthy diet. Admittedly, this wasn’t always easy. Without leaving home, with no delivery services, there were hard times. But we managed. We ordered from local markets. We ordered from hotel providers who had no hotels to deliver to.

Secondly, we never stopped training. It’s amazing how many exercises you can do at home.

One purchase we made that really paid off was a set of modular dumbbells. Instead of committing to a certain weight, we can adjust them as we improve. We can also train with weights suitable for each of us.

The bars I have are no longer available on Amazon, but the information below is adjusted for similar dumbbells.

Here is the order in which I would suggest buying everything. In parentheses I mention the additional options each purchase would open.

  1. 2 x bars (0.5kg x 2)
  2. 4 x 1.25kg plates (3kg x 2)
  3. 4 x 2.5kg plates (5.5kg x 2, 8kg x 2)
  4. 4 x 5kg plates (10.5kg x 2, 13.5kg x 2, 15.5kg x 2)
  5. 4 x 5kg plates (20.5kg x 2, 23.5kg x 2, 25.5kg x 2)

What I really like about these dumbbells is, they can easily scale from 0.5kg to 50kg. The bars themselves are sold separately. You can buy the different plates separately and over time as you improve. That’s pretty smart for a dumbbell!

I may get commissions for purchases made through links in this post.

Who You Gonna Call?

Many years ago, we used to have CRT screens. Remember those? They were these massive screens that would take up most of your desk.

Later on, plasma screens were trending.

Both of these technologies had a problem. Quite often, you’d leave the same image on the screen for a long time. When you did that, that image was “burnt” into the screen. The effect was known as “ghosting“.

Where there’s a problem, there’s often a solution. The solution in this case was screensavers.

I’ve had so many of them. From Sierra’s Johnny Castaway to the beautiful Dream Aquarium and the Living Snow Globe screen saver, people were getting really creative.

They years have passed, and most modern screens no longer suffer from ghosting.

Modern screens don’t suffer from ghosting. They have other, short-lived phenomena. But the screensavers prevailed. Instead of staring at a black screen when your computer is inactive, you can enjoy something that’s more colorful.

My current favorite is Aerial. There are Windows ports, too.

The ghosts are gone. Luckily, we still get to enjoy what they left behind. Eww. I don’t mean the octoplasm.

What’s In It For Me

I always find myself curious as to how much of a cut people take on my work. How much are my clients making? How much is the agency that got me into the role? How much is the realtor that found me my flat taking home?

I adopted a habit of stopping myself from going down that path. The truth is, it doesn’t matter. Why should I care if a middle person is making twice the amount I am pocketing?

The only real question, the only one that matters is, am I happy with my cut. If I am not, it is up to me to get a better deal. How much others are taking on top is their business.

This is true in other aspects of life, too. This is why revenge is such a useless agenda and why grudge is such a waste of resources. If the goal in life is to push forward, these do nothing to help us achieve our goal.

So the next time you wonder how much a middle man is making on your back, or thinking about getting back at someone – ask yourself a simple question: what’s in it for me?

Untie The Knot

Sitting in front of a computer all day isn’t great for my body. Add to it the tentions of work and you get a problematic combination.

The funny thing is, it creeps on you and you don’t realise it. I didn’t feel the tension that was building up.

And then I got my wife a HoMedic StatusMax 2.0 massage chair for her birthday. Not only does it fit on almost any chair, it has a heating mechanism and it’s also highly portable. It came in a big box nonetheless. Hiding that box until the special day was quite the challenge! Gladly, the surprise worked.

Months went by and my wife kept telling me how well it worked. I couldn’t be happier. And then the day came when she suggested I tried it.

I was a bit reluctant at first. I’m not a huge massage fan. And besides, I was all good, what did I need a massage chair for.

Eventually I had one of those days where your back comes back to haunt you for yesterday’s exercise. It was time for the chair.

Boy, was I in for a surprise. The chair broke me apart. I felt like every part of my back was dislocated and then pushed back into place. Muscles were warmed and loosened, shoulders were kneaded. When I got up from the chair, I could feel every fiber of a muscle in my back screaming for help.

This all sounds rather terrible, I know. But it was actually good pain. An hour later I felt like a new man. I never knew I needed that massage until I got it.

And now all I can say is, get one. You need it. Don’t break your back. Let the chair do it for you.

A Gun For Hire

I’m a contractor. I am the director of my own small company and my services are for hire. Since I usually advise in a lead or senior capacity, I get to experience hiring from both directions.

I have to say I find the process lacking. My assumptions are these:

– A contractor is a senior professional.

– As such, a contractor should have testimonials and recommendations available.

– A quick meeting should suffice to evaluate the fitness of the contractor to the requirements.

– If, despite all evidence, the arrangement does not work out, termination is very quick and straightforward.

Seems simple enough, doesn’t it? Yet, so many companies struggle with contractors. They hire poorly performing contractors (sometimes a whole team of them), keep them for way too long and then arrive at the conclusion that contractors are a bad fit for them.

I have to agree. They are a bad fit for them. But not because contractors are a bad solution. It’s their hiring/terminating process that is flawed.

Get that process right, and you’ll have a well-oiled machine run by contractors. Until you establish a stable permanent team, of course.

Don’t hate the players. Fix the game.

Less Is More

For a long time, I’ve been running my own businesses. A few years back, I was running a small software house where I had to also pitch creative new ideas.

Coming up with an idea from scratch can be challenging. Whether it’s comimg up with an idea for a game, a subject for an essay or a post, starting from a clean canvas is just HARD. Even choosing what food to order can be daunting.

So I developed ways to help myself. It all boils down to narrowing my options from the infinite to a finite number of choices. There are a couple of ways I apply that limitation.

The first is by starting simple. I write a draft. Any draft. If I can, I sometimes ask someone else to write that draft for me. It’s a diamond in the rough. It’s a seed. I then start chiselling at it. Slowly but surely, a polished product emerges.

The other is to introduce arbitrary constraints. I choose a rule at random and apply it to the task at hand. For example, I’d decide the game has to be a racing game. Or the article has to have animal analogies. The food I order has to be Italian.

Constraints help me focus. No longer do I have to worry about the What. I can focus on the How. For me, that’s easier to cope with.

I guess there’s a reason they say scarcity drives innovation. On the other hand, they also say the more the merrier. So what do they know!

A Beautiful Piece of Rubbish

Every time I moved home (of which I lost count), I spent days looking at properties. Figuring out if one fit my requirements was fairly straightforward. Location? Check. Size? Check. The real challenge was to imagine how each property would look once reorganised to suit my style and needs.

When I was developing apps or games, my clients had to face a similar challenge. They had to buy into the idea without seeing the final product.

Every time anyone starts a new venture, they have to prioritise. Do you go for functionality, or do you go for the eye-candy, the bells and whistles.

My message to entrepreneurs is this: polish your product. A website that looks like something out of the 90s (at best) isn’t appealing. It’s challenging to imagine how a final product would look.

To the investors I say: try to look beyond the cosmetics. Getting the cosmetics right is fairly straightforward. Is the engine solid? Is it innovative? Does it WORK? The prettiest product is useless if it doesn’t do what it’s supposed to.

There’s a gap between entrepreneurs and investors. One seeks functionality, the other focuses on market appeal. But really, these are two sides of the same coin. A beautiful cardboard car won’t win races. On the other hand, it would be a shame to miss out on the perfect home just because it needed a lick of paint.

So don’t judge the app by its cover, but don’t have an ugly cover, either. And let’s keep innovating together!

A Human Error

I make mistakes. We all do. Mistakes are a part of our life we can’t get rid of.

What I learned through life is how common mistakes are. You’ll find mistakes in virtually every book, every article, every city infrastructure, every work of art. Imperfection is all but a given.

However, it feels like we grossly underestimate the likelihood of a human error. In what is probably our greatest mistake, we don’t account for human error. Not enough, anyway.

My experience taught me to account for human error in everything I do. Always have a fallback, always have a plan B. Assume someone will make an unimaginable mistake and mess up your plans. Because they will.

Human error is not going away. It is more predictable than human success. You can set your watch to it. Try not to set it wrong.

Multi-Tasking is For The Weak

Don’t get me wrong. I love to multi-task. The pressure of handling multiple tasks at the same time, the sense of accomplishment when I’m done…

Here’s the thing, though. I try to multi-task only when I can afford to waste time or make mistakes. If time is of the essence, I focus on a single task at a time.

The reason for this is simple. Virtually any task requires a certain amount of concentration. My head needs to be in the right space. All the bits and pieces of the puzzle need to be in the front of my brain. More specifically, I need to calibrate my prefrontal cortex for the task.

When I switch to a different task, I have to do this calibration all over again. This is the overhead of context switching. What’s worse, my attention is divided between all my unfinished tasks. This leads not only to a slow-down, but to a higher error rate.

In Hebrew we have an expression: “para para”, which translates to “one cow at a time”. If you want something done right, focus on that one thing. One cow at a time.