A World Where Other People Think

Others are solving their problems. Solve your own.

Parallel Processing

We live in a world where other people are thinking. All the time. Oh, and talking. Hot takes from all tech corners. Find an outlet to fit you on the Internet. There are many distractions. Social media feeds never stop.

Things seem faster because of exposure. I can know what engineers at company X are doing it while they code it on live stream. I can know when it ships as I see the buzzword-laden tweet. I can read all about it when the post an article on their engineering blog. Lots is happening. But it feels like even more. And it feels like maybe I should care.

Feel the Churn

The exposure and the draw towards caring about others' problems, however, leads to a feel of chasing the new, next-best thing that you don't have yet. It is the future, only, that has promise. New tech. New framework. It never seems like our knowledge or our tools will solve the problems at hand.

But why not?

Build with Blinders

Of course there is always more to learn about and adopt. But sometimes we tend towards learning and adopting without doing much at all. Let's swing the pendulum back.

Let's solve a problem -- well and simply.

Naturally our options are more limited because of what we know. But imagine a world where you had mastered that limited toolset. You didn't feel a need to flit to the next framework.

We'd be more productive.

We'd master our tools.

We'd be building.

We wouldn't worry about what we weren't using -- whether it was a "best practice" or current a hot resume item.

We would spend less money buying things like training video subscriptions and more time making things.

We would be less obsessed with the tool or the approach.

We would be more productivity focused.

We would make the things that we needed.

We would sit with our own thoughts and solve problems.

We would be more self-reliant, finding or making systems that are simple and don't require an educational industrial complex to support.

We would spend less time googling, more time thinking, experimenting and actual learning.

It sounds fun and satisfying.

Problem Solving

It's not that we don't want to care about other people's problems. But which people? The people for whom we are writing software. Not the famous company X engineers who wrote software to solve different problems for different people.

Let others think. Let them talk. Let them market their wares. Insulate yourself a bit more so you can build what is needful.