My Writing
From the Gym to Life: Accepting Both Good and Bad Motivations
A little like my love affair with coffee, I also have a love affair with the gym. Unlike coffee, though, this is a new love that has quickly become almost as non-negotiable. I get up most weekdays around 5 a.m. to go and sometimes even on Saturdays. When someone asks what I've been up to, I invariably mention the gym as if it's the most important thing going on. Frivolous or not, in some ways, it is...
Using Jira Automation to Clone Epics and Children into a Future Sprint
In my new personal Agile practice, I wanted to make the process of setting up sprints easier. I decided to automate the creation of epics and tasks, which recur each sprint. These would then be added to the next sprint automatically...
It Could Be Good. It Could Be Bad. Who Knows?
The book Never Play It Safe by Chase Jarvis introduced me to a Chinese parable this week, and it’s been on my mind ever since. It goes like this. A farmer loses his horse. His neighbors say how unfortunate it is, to which the farmer responds, “It could be good. It could be bad. Who knows?”...
Building Financial Resilience Through Money Tracking
The start of each month is one of my favorite times because I get to do an activity I love: tracking my cash flow. Maybe it sounds like an odd activity to enjoy, but it gives me a detailed breakdown of my spending habits, which builds my confidence in maintaining financial resilience...
Experimenting with the Maker's Schedule Using Agile
Nearly a year before I left my job, I began to seriously consider what life would be like afterward. I read a couple of books about living an intentional life, Living Forward and Designing Your Life, and I spent a significant amount of time working through their exercises to identify what mattered most to me...
The Practice Step 1 - Defining an Audience Unsuccessfully
After reading Seth Godin's The Practice Shipping Creative Work (and summarizing what it meant for me here), I committed to accomplishing my first step, defining an audience and the impact I could have on them through my art. My initial goal was to define an audience and identify the change I can bring to them...
Seth Godin's The Practice - a Summary
What does a person do after abandoning the practical path? Where does motivation come from if not from money or power? I’ve asked these questions recently but could only come up with vague answers. Be creative but I wasn’t sure why...
Anti-Role Models
Who do you not want to be like? I refer to these people as anti-role models. I’ve answered this question many times over the past several years. Interactions with people whose behaviors and attitudes filled me with disgust made it obvious. Their negative traits made it easy to feel a strong desire never to be like them. With others...
Rocky Mountain Ruby - a 12-year Hiatus
This week, I attended the Rocky Mountain Ruby conference in Boulder. The last time I went was in 2012, and I have the faded t-shirt to prove it. A lot has changed since then...
How To Be Happier in a Tech Career
Most people I interact with work in tech, and the majority of these individuals are unhappy with their jobs. For someone with tech experience, it’s not hard to understand why. There’s pressure to deliver code despite endless headwinds...