It’s a developed skill. When I was freelancing, I was at times pretty pressed to get that project or take on this client.
I forced myself to never beg, always be willing to walk away, accept that I might not get the gig and generally try to not let the other party know of my desperation. It worked wonders on my confidence in negotiations and kept me from taking bad deals that would have prevented me from getting better ones.
I’m be no means saying that is easy. It really is not, but it is something that can be learned.
Drinking, or using substance, to control your emotions is a dangerous path to go down. It let me to develop a habit that I luckily were able to break before it turned into a bigger problem.
In the last months I identified a pattern in my media consumption. When there is a huge new issue (Covid, War on Ukraine, Fukushima…) I turn on the news. And yes, various big international reputable sources (NY Times, Wash Post, BBC, Reuters, Spiegel, Süddeutsche) plus the independent journalists I found over the years to be reliable and professional, usually in podcast format. Then I dive into it and try to get as good as an understanding as I can. Until there is a saturation point where it doesn’t help my everyday routine anymore. The question that I try to answer during that period is: Should I somehow change my behavior?
With Covid, it was figuring out how to navigate social situations. What are useful measures, which ones are useless? With the Ukraine it was, is my family in immediate danger? Is there something I can do to help from where I am at?
When I found an answer to these questions, I adjust my behavior and I turn the news off and only tune in occasionally to follow along and check if those answers are still valid or did something fundamentally change.
I normally read one of the big news papers here in Germany, die Zeit, to keep an eye on local and country wide politics. Usually I scan the headlines and then read one or two articles a week.
In addition to that I follow several journalistic podcasts that provide more detailed information and context on ongoing topics. They are typically a once a week overview. From the show notes, I jump to one or two long form articles if I want to know more about a certain topic.
From where I am at, there is nothing I can do to shape the course of the world at large, but I also don’t want to lose contact. But yes, I prefer to get a detailed breakdown afterwards than a live ticker.
There is also the regional events and decisions in my neighborhood and kids school to keep up with, which is where I feel it is my citizen’s responsibility to stay informed and ideally participate in the decision making process.
I am also trying to block out tech news that are not immediately relevant to my current work as that also easily distracts me.
The senders are all turned up to eleven and is up to the receiver to filter out the noise.
The book that had the biggest influence on how I consume media was Neil Postman‘s Amusing ourselves to death.
Obsidian works with what is called a vault, i.e. a project folder. You can then search for text across all the notes in a vault. No need to remember the date.
In addition to that, you can work with hash tags inside the notes and then filter files based on tags, e.g. #sql-query or so.
I found that the sweet spot is somewhere in between these two extremes.
After a week of working from home, sometimes I found that I hadn’t left the house for anything other than groceries.
In the mornings, I get up and get the kids ready. Then work. Then the kids come home. Family time, dinner and so on. Time to sleep. Rinse, repeat.
So yeah, I find going to the office from time to time refreshing. It helps that my team agreed that office days are for socializing and focused work is not expected.
The place I am working at has an online booking system for all the desks available the entire office building (~14 floors) and while there are no private one person rooms, the offices are 4-8 seats and there is enough vacancies to find a quiet spot. Plus you get to know people from different departments by sitting in different areas of the building.
Works pretty well. On top, my team could decide to only have a presence day every two weeks and we have that as a meetings day where there is no expectation to write code or do focused work but socialize.
I found that this I am in favor of a hybrid setup like this. For the reasons stated in the post, I really do like coming together in person and at the same time I am a parent that appreciates the time saved when working remote from home most days.
As a high volume podcast consumer, I find it interesting that US casts are pretty much all following a completely ad based model, while German ones are much more subscription/donation based.
And yes, paying for good journalism is inevitable if you want quality. Just, if the crowd picks up the tab, nobody needs to listen to ads.
we used to call ‘parking lot’ as in ‘Let’s take this outside’. Then when the standup ended, those that wanted to get in on the topics on the parking lot would stick around.
And for every minute you ran late, you had to do a push up.
There is a saying where I live that wind is when the sheep don’t have curly hair anymore. And rain when the fish are swimming on your eye level.
In all seriousness though, it’s of course true.