{ HonestAbe }

25 Years On

May 21, 2020

As I progress towards the end of my tenure as a 25 year old man on this planet I figured it was time to start reflecting on some of the things I’ve learned over the my quarter of a century here.

1. When you’re looking for something, and you finally find it, don’t put it back where you found it, put it where you’d expect to find it.

   • This applies to things round your house. I don’t keep my house ordered by any means, but this is one of the few things I’ve picked up over the years that has stopped me searching for everything from passports to SATA cables.
   • In a more technical environment, chances are if you’re looking for documentation or a particular function then it’s likely that someone on your team is too.

2. “If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it” is a very damaging phrase.

   • This was taught to me by one of my old technical managers, Conor Clafferty, and I still hold it close to me. Technical debt is a pain and you shouldn’t have to dedicate time to it, tidy as you go.
   • Keep all your belongings well maintained and in good working order. Owning a zippo lighter really taught me the importance of maintaining the nice things you own.

3. Observability and transparency in all things.

   • This isn’t just a technical learning, although for all you budding developers the single most important technique I teach for production ready software is: Make your software observable.
   • Outside of the technical field make your actions transparent to those who they matter to, whether that’s your colleagues or loved ones.
     
   • This is one of the things I love about the blockchain and why I believe its importance in government. Every action is accountable and observable.

4. Unknowns aren’t scary, they’re challenging

   • As techincal people it is engrained into us that unknowns are scary, and in a business sense they certainly can be, but in our personal lives we should look at unknowns as great adventure.
   • This leads me nicely into my next point…

5. Keep making new mistakes

   • We all make mistakes on a daily basis, ranging from insignifcant to catastrophic. That’s fine, we can learn from our mistakes and to stop making them would cut us off from a great experience
   • “To err is to human so… Err?” Simon Pegg, The Worlds End

6. “This is not a hill I am willing to die on”

   • This is a phrase that I was reacquainted with by my good colleague Chris Buckley. A man wise beyond his years.
   • When I was younger I would fight tooth and nail for the best technical solution, much to the annoyance of both project managers and developers around me. This isn’t neccesarily bad but will make all of your other arguments, regardless of their validity, carry less weight.

7. Listen More.

   • We all know the five whys and can introduce it into meaningful conversations, it’s important that we don’t take this as a hard and fast rule and actually listen to the previous four entries in the “Why saga”.

8. Listen More…

   • I’m not copping out here by writing the same thing twice. As technical people we read code and configurations all day, staring at thousands of lines of output and questioning where we went wrong. This is a lot of reading and can lead to quite a lot of fatigue. Listen to podcasts and audiobooks, gain all the insight of them whilst giving your eyes a rest.
   • This was a lesson taught to me by my secondary school English teacher Clare Doherty. She was one of my favourite teachers and to this day remains an a good friend. Even English teachers need a rest from reading.

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