I’m working on a writing project with a geographically distributed team. We all have full-time paying jobs and this is a professional project with no monetary compensation. We worked as an agile team, in iterations, pairing, helping each other write the best expression of our ideas. We turned over our draft and waited for copyediting […]
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I bet many of you have resolutions you will make and attempt to stick to in the new year. Great. I hope you do keep those resolutions. The chances of that are not so good. I don’t do resolutions. Especially for big things, such as losing 30 pounds. Oh my, that is a huge goal
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Mark and I watched Money Monster last weekend. One of the characters asked, “When is it your call?” (No, I don’t remember who or the total context. It was about the responsibility of recommending stocks to people.) The idea was “When is it your responsibility?” I got to thinking about who makes which calls about
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So many times we look for perfection—in our projects, in our homes, and in our personal lives. What’s so good about perfection? I see people try for perfection in any number of ways. We added this bathroom in our old house. When the tile guy asked me where I wanted the soap dish, I said,
I’ve been in a couple of Fitbit challenges to see who can walk “most” in a work-week. I’ve enjoyed them and have pushed myself a little each week, to see if I can do just a little bit more every day. One of the problems I have is that by Friday, I’m tired. I’ve been
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I want to improve at many things: my exercise, my writing, my teaching, just to name three. When I reflect back on my progress—or lack thereof—I ask myself if I’m doing my part. Wanting is not enough. I have to do my part. Sometimes, my part is to show up and do the work. (See
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I’ve been working on several things these weeks, slowly moving them to done. I have workshops for Agile 2016, books in progress, monthly columns, and my non-fiction writing. As I reviewed previous workshop designs, I realized I’m a lot better at designing workshops than I was, say, ten years ago. Since I’m in a huge
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Given that I’ve published so much, I meet people who say, “I want to write. But, I need to wait for a good time to write.” Or, they say they need an outline or permission from someone—a boss or a spouse. I can be pretty sure about one thing: these people will never write anything. The
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In the agile community, we have a saying, “Fail fast.” It means we are supposed to feel safe to fail, and that we want to fail fast so we can use that learning to iterate on the requirements. We have opportunities to improve. I like the idea that it’s safe to fail. No one berates
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I recently got a FitBit Zip. I got the small one that fits in your pocket and tracks steps. It supposedly counts calories, too, but I’m not using the calorie part. I have transparent data now. I am astonished at how quickly I have changed my behavior. I knew I was barely moving. I knew
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