This reminds me a lot of Dale Carnegie's "How to Stop Worrying and Start Living".
In the first chapter he talks about how successful people often sit once or twice a week and write down the mistakes they made in order that they might make them less in the future.
The one that stuck with me the most of course was Benjamin Franklin's "Fool Things I've Done" which he wrote into every night.
Of course the book that helped me quit smoking, Alan Carr's phenomenal (albeit, (car salesman with rust proof undercoating to sell)-esque) reminded me of Carnegie's book as well.
The moral of the story for me? I need to reread Carnegie's book! Added Meditations to my cart though. I buy almost every book I read about that sounds cool. Working my way through them one by one!
A friend and I were just talking about Alan Carr's Easy Way to Quit Smoking. When I read the book, I started sticking reminders to my bathroom mirror so that every morning, the first thing I would see was, "Yippee, I'm a non smoker" or one of my other affirmations.
My favourite part of the book is that it convinces you to think about smoking. When I failed to quit, I'd always do the "don't think about smoking" dance. Needless to say, that always failed. Since the book, I've tried to focus more on my flaws. It hasn't worked in all ways, though I'm still trying.
I've been reading "A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy" by William B. Irvine and Marcus Aurelius is one of the 4 eminent Stoics featured in that book. His "Meditations" is referred to often. I've found the philosophy behind Stoicism to be very helpful in my day job coding and at managing a team. One of the most useful practices is knowing the difference between what you can control, what you have no control over at all, and those things that you have some but not complete control (i.e. I can play to the best of my ability in a tennis match but the outcome is not really up to me). It's incredible to think that Marcus was sick (with an ulcer, more than likely), his wife probably cheated on him, out of 14 children, only 6 survived, and he was emperor! And yet, when he died, their was a public outcry.
So, after reading "A Guide to the Good Life" and now that I've read your article, I'm definitely inclined to pick up "Meditations" for my next read. Thanks for the insights!
It's incredible to think that Marcus was sick (with an ulcer, more than likely), his wife probably cheated on him, out of 14 children, only 6 survived, and he was emperor!
It is incredible that someone with such wealth and power could remain deeply rational and humble. Gregory Hays translation is the best of the lot. If you are going through stressful and trying times, I would recommend reading any one page out of meditations. It will give you solace when life seems to be a battle against enormous odds.
The Enchiridion by Epictetus is very good. If you like Meditations, you would love this too.
Ryan Holidays recommends Gregory Hays's translation, and I forward you his recommendation. Found it much more digestible/resonating over the public domain ones.
I'll never get bitten by this again, but alas the advice comes too late.
TLDR, I left a hardcoded beta expiration date in a product that was submitted to NMCI for certification (it's a DoD thing, they ended up taking nine months to approve the new version of a product that's been in use for 20 years). I know, I should be shot, but hey, I was the only developer, I had nine months to port the entire application to a new platform (64-bit thing), and we'd just had a baby.
Silver lining, I could not find any way to work around it, even as an administrator with knowledge of the source code (other than changing the system date). We managed to sneak in a new build somehow, but they had to "restart the testing process" (and what that is I still don't know).
Convincing others is delicate work - Start with the most important point only. Once they begin to see that the current situation might not be perfect, introduce more ideas slowly. Act unemotionally. Allow them to think through the idea on their own. Watch 12 Angry Men again.
Obvious now that I read it, but until I did I hadn't thought about it that way.
Akin to "Analyze theories before acting on them", my first rule of debugging is "There is always a reason - understand it completely".
A large part of my judgement of fellow programmers depends on whether they are satisfied by fixing the symptom, or insist on understanding exactly what was going on to cause it.
I've always found his structure far more useful than the usual 'list of maxims to follow every day' style most self-guides become.
His just seems more reflexive to his emotions. Like every day is a struggle against his natural state of being and this is how he keeps the scales in balance.
- Avoid "unrevertable" changes if you can:
* Don't submit (commit) code that can't be easily reverted - e.g. don't introduce code that if ran dozen or more times on production systems, then reverting it would require other files to be reverted/recreated/rewritten from scratch apart from itself. (Someone decides to go from XML->JSON, or JSON->XML, or one scripting language to another - that is a very drastic change, because people would've picked on the new system, and few weeks later if it turns out it's not working, not only you have to go back to the original state, you have to rewrite whatever was changed into the scripting/etc. files back into the old one - and sometimes that's not straightforward).
A quick heads-up for those who think (as I once did) that it might be cool to learn Latin just to read the Meditations without translation: its original title is Τὰ εἰς ἑαυτόν (i.e., Marcus Aurelius wrote the Meditations in Greek).
It's good to check a few translations. Some didn't resonate with me in the way they phrased things or their word choice. Same with any classic - stop by a used book store and read the same paragraph a couple times in different translations and see which works for you.
I've recently been reading meditations (and carrying it around in my bag always at the ready). Very good book and I highly recommend writing your own meditations as well.
[+] [-] codyb|11 years ago|reply
In the first chapter he talks about how successful people often sit once or twice a week and write down the mistakes they made in order that they might make them less in the future.
The one that stuck with me the most of course was Benjamin Franklin's "Fool Things I've Done" which he wrote into every night.
Of course the book that helped me quit smoking, Alan Carr's phenomenal (albeit, (car salesman with rust proof undercoating to sell)-esque) reminded me of Carnegie's book as well.
The moral of the story for me? I need to reread Carnegie's book! Added Meditations to my cart though. I buy almost every book I read about that sounds cool. Working my way through them one by one!
Maybe I'll start a fool things I've done as well.
[+] [-] hluska|11 years ago|reply
My favourite part of the book is that it convinces you to think about smoking. When I failed to quit, I'd always do the "don't think about smoking" dance. Needless to say, that always failed. Since the book, I've tried to focus more on my flaws. It hasn't worked in all ways, though I'm still trying.
[+] [-] seizethecheese|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phea|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nikkisnow|11 years ago|reply
So, after reading "A Guide to the Good Life" and now that I've read your article, I'm definitely inclined to pick up "Meditations" for my next read. Thanks for the insights!
[+] [-] redmaverick|11 years ago|reply
It is incredible that someone with such wealth and power could remain deeply rational and humble. Gregory Hays translation is the best of the lot. If you are going through stressful and trying times, I would recommend reading any one page out of meditations. It will give you solace when life seems to be a battle against enormous odds.
The Enchiridion by Epictetus is very good. If you like Meditations, you would love this too.
[+] [-] konstruktor|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] treme|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gavinpc|11 years ago|reply
I'll never get bitten by this again, but alas the advice comes too late.
TLDR, I left a hardcoded beta expiration date in a product that was submitted to NMCI for certification (it's a DoD thing, they ended up taking nine months to approve the new version of a product that's been in use for 20 years). I know, I should be shot, but hey, I was the only developer, I had nine months to port the entire application to a new platform (64-bit thing), and we'd just had a baby.
Silver lining, I could not find any way to work around it, even as an administrator with knowledge of the source code (other than changing the system date). We managed to sneak in a new build somehow, but they had to "restart the testing process" (and what that is I still don't know).
[+] [-] mkohlmyr|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] carsongross|11 years ago|reply
Convincing others is delicate work - Start with the most important point only. Once they begin to see that the current situation might not be perfect, introduce more ideas slowly. Act unemotionally. Allow them to think through the idea on their own. Watch 12 Angry Men again.
Obvious now that I read it, but until I did I hadn't thought about it that way.
[+] [-] foxylad|11 years ago|reply
A large part of my judgement of fellow programmers depends on whether they are satisfied by fixing the symptom, or insist on understanding exactly what was going on to cause it.
[+] [-] taitischia|11 years ago|reply
I've always found his structure far more useful than the usual 'list of maxims to follow every day' style most self-guides become.
His just seems more reflexive to his emotions. Like every day is a struggle against his natural state of being and this is how he keeps the scales in balance.
He talks more about his working day here too: http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4597/the-art-of-fic...
[+] [-] malkia|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mhartl|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andre|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jljljl|11 years ago|reply
I wonder if publishing them somewhere public is also a good idea, as a sort of reminder to stay humble and admit your own faults and lessons learned.
[+] [-] gry|11 years ago|reply
Simply, I enter an idea and in return, I'm immediately given one I posted before, reinforcing the idea.
[+] [-] razibog|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] devindotcom|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jjbohn|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lizzard|11 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] kimonos|11 years ago|reply
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