Tech | Career | Musings
If you purchased “Be the Master” on Leanpub (it’s no longer available for sale there), I urge you to check the following, so that you can obtain a discount on the new, replacement book I’m writing with Manning.
Read MoreHello, Christmas fans! I’ve always been a huge fan of the nostalgic Rankin-Bass “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” and for many years our Christmas traditions included this collector-quality train set. Sadly, we no longer have room for it, so it’s looking for a new home.
Read MoreI need to clear out some space in my cabinets, and so I’m offering a blowout sale on many of my business, PowerShell, and fiction titles. All prices include US Domestic shipping; due to the paperwork involved, I’m not able to offer international shipping. Sorry, customs paperwork sucks. I’m happy to autograph ’em for you as well.
Read MoreWith the recent news events, I’ve had more than a few politically minded friends reach out and ask “what if” type questions about the upcoming 2020 US Presidential Election. So let’s do this thing.
Read MoreI’ve been teaching technologists various topics since… oh, 1997 or so, when I taught my first Windows NT 4.0 MCSE courses. God, I’m old. Anyway… the very best way to frustrate an experienced tech teacher is to bemoan the world’s lack of “advanced” content. So please stop doing it, and here’s why:
Read MoreAs previously announced, I have retired Be the Master and Let’s Talk Business, two of my self-published books. But it’s actually good news:
Read MoreWe currently living in a time where “science” is neither universally trusted nor accepted. For data-driven, fact-first people who see science as a meaningful way to understand our world, that can be frustrating. But there are reason why science has always received significant push-back.
Read MoreI was recently approached by a traditional book publisher – one I quite like, by the way – about the possibility of writing a “soft skills” book that would be specific to technology professionals.
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A lot of us — probably MOST of us — are afraid to fail. Failure hurts, either physically or mentally, and our brains obviously try to guide us away from pain and unpleasantness. But that also means, in an awful lot of cases, that we also don’t TRY. We anticipate the failure, even though it’s never happened to us, and doing so impedes our ability to grow and succeed.
Despite the popular belief, kids’ minds aren’t really like sponges. That all starts to fade at about age 5, when the prefrontal cortex starts to really develop. What kids lack, and gain only with time, is a fear of failing.
Failing is the very essence of learning. If you do something over and over and over and never fail at it, you’re not actually learning. That is, you’re not necessarily changing the structure of your brain. You’re perhaps reinforcing existing structures (specifically, synaptic connections between neurons), but you’re not creating new ones or changing existing ones. By definition, then, you’re not learning or changing or growing.
Failing does not make YOU a “failure.” That’s a hugely important concept, and this week I’d love it if you did nothing else but think about that a LOT and really embrace it. You can fail all the freakin’ time, and still not be a failure. You’re only a failure if you repeat the exact same failures over and over and over. If you’re not repeating, then you’re learning. You’re growing.
Yes, sometimes failure can hurt. Fail to fill the car with gas and it’s an inconvenience; fail to pick the right stocks and you could go broke. But most of our day-to-day failures aren’t all that bad. They’re not epic decisions that will change your life. So whatever new thing you’ve been thinking about — perhaps something that’s on the road to your success definition — give it a shot. Fail at it. Examine why you failed. Learn from that, and try again.
YOU aren’t a failure. Well, unless you never TRY. Not trying is a big failure.
Every culture on Earth takes a stab at what age someone is an “adult.” Many do it in graduations: in the US, most states permit kids to start driving unaccompanied at age 16, often with a “learning permit” being issued somewhere up to a year prior. 16 is the minimum working age for most jobs, while 18 is the age where you get to vote or enlist in the military. You wait until 21 to drink alcohol. But do any of those numbers make sense?
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