The most common error of a smart engineer is to optimise the thing that should not exist.

Elon Musk talks about this 5 Engineering Principles during an amazing interview series at Starbase Texas. In this article I apply these principles to Software Development and share personal examples.

productivity

Productivity

entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship

computerscience

Computer Science

product

Product & Design

Elon's 5 Engineering Principles - Software Development Edition

Take a good look at what you're putting into your life so that you can adapt and change your outcome

You're the Sum of Your Inputs

You may find that changing one input creates a cascade effect across all of your outputs. It may take time. It may take discipline. But as you start to see the results, it will make you hungry for more positive outcomes and encourage you to replace more toxic inputs with positive ones.

Your input determines your output

So think of your life as a banquet. What kind of ingredients are you cooking with?

Use the best ingredients

Take a good look at what you're putting into your life so that you can adapt and change your outcome. 

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

habits

Habits

timemanagement

Time Management

Personal Growth Means Recognizing You're the Sum of Your Inputs

Phones are the biggest thieves in people lives and my life . Personally ,after the pandemic I have been addicted to my phone . But ,I have started to watch the time I spend on the screen . "Bad news is that time flies ,but the good one is that you are the pilot 😉 "

Phone

I just wanna tell you to have priorities. Don't be a slave to the phone .as time management requires judt self discipline, self masterty and self control more than anything. Don't let phone addiction change your life or prevent you from your dream ✨ .as your future is created by what you do today not tomorrow. So, be determined that you wanna save your time .and start from today and not tomorrow or after

It's great. A person name "M" shared this and I love it

Curated Digital Wellbeing Manager to Help You Beat Smartphone Addiction

YourHour - Phone Addiction Tracker & Controller - Apps on Google Play

After celebrating all these important dates, it comes time to think at least a little bit on our future selves. That’s why, it’s important to know which habits we MUST create in this new year.

5 Habits You Must Create In 2022

Actually, not just for the wrong reasons. Nobody should advise another person to create a habit just because "it is good".

You MUST NOT Create any Habits

Actually, you should focus on who you want to be. Research shows that behaviours related to our values stick easily [1].

Focus on Identity First

Which habits will let you live up to your identity? Once you answer that question, you could start thinking of which habits to create.

After Knowing Your Identity, Focus on Habits as Tools

Follow me! References: Verplanken B, Sui J. Habit and Identity: Behavioral, Cognitive, Affective, and Motivational Facets of an Integrated Self. Frontiers in Psychology. 2019;10:1504.

Would You Like To Read More Stuff Like This?

5 Habits You Must Create in 2022

People can't be changed. They have to want to change.

Make a list of all the positive outcomes you expect from making a change and the negative outcomes of not making it.Try to come up with these reasons yourself to make it more effective.

Outcome Expectancies 

Write down plans and steps to implement your changes and to accomplish your goals.Keep it very detailed by including time, place and also a backup plan in case the initial plan fails.Example:I will wake up at 5am and go to the gym to exercise. (Backup plan) If gym is closed, I will exercise in my room.

Implementation Intention 

Don't waste time dreaming about being a changed person.Instead, use your imagination to visualize how you want to bring about that change into your life. This can boost your performance.

Process Imagery

Spend more time with positive and supportive people who will help you make that change. Try to find a partner who wants to make a similar change, and support and motivate each other. Try and avoid people who might distract and demotivate you from chasing your goals.

People Power

Try and be aware of your emotions at all times, and learn to manage them.Don't bottle up your emotions and try to suppress them.Exercise can be helpful to improve mental and emotional health.

Emotional Resilience 

This book uses proven research to suggest various steps  to implement changes in your life. 

Looking to make a positive change in your life? Maybe you’ve read a few self-help books and think you know what you need to do – maybe some positive thinking, making a resolution or simply wishing for happiness? Well, here’s some news: none of this is going to help; you simply don’t get things in life just by wishing for them. In You Can Change Your Life top psychologist Rob Yeung investigates ways of making change stick. He offers the most up-to-date thinking on the skills, beliefs and methods that will help you to change your life. Rooted in evidence-based research and based on proven strategies and treatments, Rob offers a new perspective and new techniques to enable you to transform your life, or simply work out what’s stopping you from achieving your goals. You can lose weight, feel more positive, give up a bad habit, get ahead at work or improve anything about yourself. Whatever you want to achieve, you will feel inspired by the practical advice in this fascination book and be able to tackle change with confidence.

motivationandinspiration

Motivation & Inspiration

books

Books

Looking to make a positive change in your life? Maybe you’ve read a few self-help books and think you know what you need to do – maybe some positive thinking, making a resolution or simply wishing for happiness? Well, here’s some news: none of this is going to help; you simply don’t get things in life just by wishing for them. In You Can Change Your Life top psychologist Rob Yeung investigates ways of making change stick. He offers the most up-to-date thinking on the skills, beliefs and methods that will help you to change your life. Rooted in evidence-based research and based on proven strategies and treatments, Rob offers a new perspective and new techniques to enable you to transform your life, or simply work out what’s stopping you from achieving your goals. You can lose weight, feel more positive, give up a bad habit, get ahead at work or improve anything about yourself. Whatever you want to achieve, you will feel inspired by the practical advice in this fascination book and be able to tackle change with confidence.

Rob Yeung

You Can Change Your Life

Keeping and maintaining good habits works a lot easier with small changes and small habits or actions. If we think "too big" it most probably won't occur.The key to success is to think small when wanting to develop new behaviors or routines.And not to forget: to make something stick permanently, it's important to celebrate after completing the habit.

Start Small And Not Big

"Every behavior needs a prompt to occur. Your existing routine can serve a prompt in a powerful and elegant way," Fogg says.

1. After I sit down at my desk, I will put my phone on do not disturb mode. 2. After I close my office door, I will organize one item that's lying around. 3. After I finish reading e-mail, I will close the e-mail browser tab. 4. After I launch a new Word doc, I will hide all other programs running on my computer.

12 Tiny Habits - Part 1

5. After I find myself mindlessly browsing social media, I will log out. 6. After I sit down at a meeting, I will write the title, the date, and the attendees at the top of my notes. 7. After I notice a call going on for longer than expected, I'll say this: "It's been great to talk, but I need to wrap up. What haven't we covered yet that's important?" 8. After I read an important e-mail, I will file it in a folder for the designated project.

12 Tiny Habits - Part 2

9. After I read an e-mail I can't deal with immediately, I will mark it as unread. 10. After I read an e-mail that's time-sensitive, I will reply with this script: "Got it. I will review it in detail and get back in touch soon." 11. After I leave the office, I will think about one success from the day. 12. After I walk in the door at home, I will hang my keys on the hook.

12 Tiny Habits - Part 3

Some simple tiny habits to start with right the next working day

Behavior scientist BJ Fogg has been studying habits for nearly three decades at Stanford University and has found that people want behaviors to make them more productive.

Stanford scientist: 12 tiny habits that will instantly make you more productive

Near the middle of December, many offices slow down. Energy and motivation drop and many stop their work for the holidays.  When it's time to go back to work in January, it can be difficult to get back into work mode. There are many reasons for this post-holiday funk, but you can do things to get out of it.

Post-holiday funk

Many people start the year by looking back at the past year. Getting out of the office gives you an overall view of your past contribution. You're likely to notice the things you are proud of, but also your failures. Around the new year, you may end up with thoughts about what you should've done differently in the past, leading to feelings of depression and lack of motivation. When you get back to work, it's important to look forward to the new year instead of back on the past one. Focusing on finding new opportunities can help to energise you.

Focus forward

Your reflections on the past can also lead to New Year's resolutions. This can be good if your commitments are not abstract, such as "get a new job", or "be more productive". Turn your goals into specific actions. Break the general goal down into tasks and attach a time frame to each task.

Get specific

People don't evaluate things on an absolute scale but rather assess success through social comparison, where we compare ourselves to other people. <ul><li>Upward social comparisons mean comparing yourself to someone better off than you and can result in feeling bad about yourself.</li><li>Downward social comparisons make you feel good about yourself but don't motivate you to continue pushing forward. Instead, it leaves you complacent.</li></ul>Instead, use social comparisons to motivate yourself to reach new heights.

Social comparisons

career

Career

The Post-Holiday Funk Is Real

Each of us is occasionally overwhelmed by a multitude of competing desires: pursue job offer A or B? Start a new relationship or stay single? Sign up to run a marathon, or enjoy not getting up early to train? 
But life is full of marathons, and they don’t necessarily involve running. It’s good to know which desires to pursue and which ones to leave behind – to know which marathons are worth running. In this Guide, I aim to show you how.

How to know what you really want

It’s true that when people strongly desire something, such as a new shirt, they might feel like they ‘need’ it – but they don’t need it in the same way that they need water or food. Their survival isn’t at stake.
Desire (as opposed to need) is an intellectual appetite for things that you perceive to be good, but that you have no physical, instinctual basis for wanting – and that’s true whether those things are actually good or not.

Desires are fundamentally different from needs

Your intellectual appetites might include knowing the answer to a mathematics problem; the satisfaction of receiving a text from someone you have a crush on; or getting a coveted job offer. 
These things won’t necessarily cause physical pleasure. They might spill over into physical enjoyment, but they are not dependent on it. Rather, the pleasure is primarily intellectual.

Intellectual pleasure

French social theorist René Girard realised one peculiar feature of desire: ‘We would like our desires to come from our deepest selves, our personal depths,’ he said, ‘but if it did, it would not be desire. Desire is always for something we feel we lack.’ Girard noted that desire is not, as we often imagine it, something that we ourselves fully control. It is not something that we can generate or manufacture on our own. It is largely the product of a social process.Our desires are mimetic, they don’t come from within; rather, we mimic what other people want.

Desire is a social process – it is mimetic

When I think about the lifestyle that I would most like to have, who do I feel most embodies it?
 In reality, this person almost certainly does not live the lifestyle you imagine them to have, but it’s still good to identify those you pay attention to the most when you’re thinking about the kind of life you want.

Influence: Identify the people influencing what you want

Is there anyone I would not like to see succeed? 
Are there certain people whose achievements make me uncomfortable or self-conscious? This is the first clue that they might be a ‘negative model of desire’ – ie, someone you are constantly measuring yourself against.

Influence: The question of success

It’s useful to recognise what kind of models are influencing you. Girard identified two main types: those inside your world, and those outside it.Models inside your world (‘internal’ models of desire) are the people you might really come into contact with: friends, family, co-workers, or really anyone you can actually interact with in some way – it could be the person who cuts your hair, for instance. These are people whose desires are in some sense intertwined with your own – they can affect your desires, and you can in turn affect theirs.

Categorise your models as internal and external

Online or offline, the closer someone seems to being like you, the more you can relate to them – and the more you are likely to pay attention to what they want. Who are most people more jealous of?
Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world? Or the colleague who has a similar education to you, and a similar job and works roughly the same hours, but who makes an extra $5,000 a year? For almost everyone, it’s the second person. The difference between the internal and the external mediation of desire explains why.

The comparisons

Advertisements also model desires to us, obviously, but notice how they usually work: the companies serving the ads typically show you not the thing itself, but other people wanting the thing. Advertisers play right into our mimetic nature.
Be aware that internal models lead to more volatility of desire in your life because the world of internal models is highly reflexive: you can affect one another’s desires, which isn’t possible in the world of external models.

Advertisements stoking desire

Because desire is mimetic, people are naturally drawn to want what others want. Two desires converging on the same object are bound to clash. This means that mimetic desire often leads people into unnecessary competition and rivalry with one another in an infernal game of status anxiety. 
Mimetic desire is why a class of students can enter a university with very different ideas of what they want to do when they graduate yet converge on a much smaller set of opportunities – which they mimetically reinforce in one another – by the time they graduate.

Beware of becoming obsessively focused on what your neighbours have or want

Be aware that your desires can become hijacked through this process of mimetic attraction. It’s easy to become obsessively focused on what your neighbours have or want, rather than on your immediate responsibilities and relationship commitments. 
We humans are social creatures who know others so that we can also know ourselves, and that’s a good thing – but, if we’re not careful, we can become excessively concerned with others.

Hijacking Of Desires

As well as identifying the specific models influencing your desires, it is also helpful to consider whether you have become embedded in a particular system of desire. For example, consider the chef Sébastien Bras, owner of Le Suquet restaurant in Laguiole, France, who had three Michelin stars – the highest culinary distinction for a French restaurant – for a full 18 years. Until 2018. That year, he took the unprecedented step of asking the Michelin Guide to stop rating his restaurant and never come back.

Map out the systems of desire in your life

Less extreme mimetic desires might include the desire to go to a specific university because all your friends want to go there. Yet the desire could also have something to do with the school’s academic reputation. Desires can have many different influences, some mimetic and some non-mimetic. The key is to understand the forces at work, and to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Take ownership of your desires

To be anti-mimetic is to be free from the unintentional following of desires without knowing where they came from; it’s freedom from the herd mentality; freedom from the ‘default’ mode that causes us to pursue things without examining why.It’s possible to develop anti-mimetic machinery in your guts – things that have traditionally been called virtues, or habits of being, such as prudence, fortitude, courage and honesty – that keep you grounded in something deeper even while the mimetic waters swirl around you

Live an anti-mimetic life

The restlessness of desire is not necessarily a bad thing – it’s what pushes people to seek more – but a persistent feeling of restlessness could be a sign that the desires you are chasing lack the power to satisfy.

Restlessness 

<ul><li>Desires are fundamentally different from needs. </li><li>Desire is a social process – it’s mimetic. Our desires don’t come from within; rather, we mimic what other people want.</li><li>Identify the people or ‘models’ influencing what you want. </li><li>Categorise these models. Find out who is influencing you from within your world, and who is influencing you from the outside.</li><li>Beware of becoming obsessively focused on what your neighbours have or want.</li><li>Map out the systems of desire in your life. </li><li>Take ownership of your desires. </li><li>Live an anti-mimetic life.</li></ul>

Key points – How to know what you really want

From career choices to new purchases, use René Girard’s mimetic theory to resist the herd and forge your own path in life

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

problemsolving

Problem Solving

Accelerated work experiences or AWEs include any work format that compresses productive activity in time or space to deliver a result much faster than would otherwise be possible. 
Popular methods include pomodoros, hackathons, design sprints, Scrum sprints, rapid prototyping sessions, design thinking crash courses, and Startup Weekends, among others.

Accelerated Work Experiences

As work has become ever more digital, distributed, and asynchronous over the past few decades, we have basked in our newfound freedom. Now we can work anywhere, anytime! And thus we find ourselves working everywhere, all the time. 
The splintering of the experience of work into a million tiny pieces has made us stressed out, frazzled, and distracted. It has robbed us of many of the inherent pleasures of work: the bliss of deep concentration, the satisfaction of starting and finishing something in one sitting, and the fulfillment of working shoulder to shoulder with peers.

The Logic Of AWEs

A MESA is a 5-day, intensive work sprint delivered on behalf of a client, usually a large company or other organization. MESA Co. gathers 12-16 participants (which they have found to be just the right number) in beautiful, often exotic locations around the world, seeking to create the ideal environment to focus on and solve a complex problem that the organization is facing. 
The participants are split more or less evenly between employees of the client company, and outside experts and makers, who offer outside perspectives and hands-on skills.

The MESA Method

Here is the basic premise: the world is only getting more complex. This means there will be fewer and fewer proven solutions to problems. What we need is not a new and better solution, but a method for creating solutions quickly, in response to changing conditions.
At the same time, the most talented people are increasingly mobile, picky, and in demand. It is going to be ever more difficult to tie them down with full-time employment.

The Premise Of MESA

The only way to solve the world’s most complex challenges is by working with the best in the world. 
And the only way to do that is to keep the time commitment short, remove every obstacle to them creating value, and create an environment and a team where they can do the best work of their lives.

The Best In The World

The goal is to create a brief, but very intense working environment where a small group of carefully chosen participants can build something tangible to advance a mission or cause that they care about. 
The method takes advantage of rapid prototyping tools, software-as-a-service, and modular templates to build something real and functional that embodies the knowledge and experience of everyone at the table. This prototype is used not just to demonstrate the viability of a solution, but to build consensus around a new direction for the company.

Blending Man And Machine

The client is a “problem owner” responsible for an important challenge that they can’t solve on their own. Perhaps their main product is no longer resonating with a younger generation of consumers. 
Their marketing channels are outdated and obsolete, but they are afraid to cannibalize them with new ones. They could be tasked with revitalizing a product line in the face of major technological shifts. Or it could be a social mission, meeting the needs of an underserved population under tight budgetary constraints.

The Problem Owner: The Client

Day 1 is a “download day” dedicated to getting all the relevant information out of everyone’s heads and “out on the table.” This includes the external participants, who were chosen for their specialized expertise in the industries, markets, and technologies thought to be most relevant.On Day 2, the carefully worded “mission” is unveiled, drawing on the discoveries from the day before to frame the problem owner’s problem as an inspiring, yet feasible challenge. The second half of the day is spent generating a small set of ideas to prototype.

The Structure Of MESA: Download And Mission Day

Day 3 is for prototyping, which includes small groups writing copy, making mockups or landing pages, building demos, or producing short videos or presentations to demonstrate the viability of the ideas from the day before. 
It is on Day 3, once people have to start making real tradeoffs in the making of the product, that the real constraints arise.

Prototyping

Day 4 is focused on more advanced prototyping, taking the most viable prototypes to a basic level of functionality. The leader pushes to bring the fidelity of the prototype as close to reality as possible, including real code and functional backends whenever possible.
The further toward reality it moves, the more hidden constraints and priorities will come to the surface.

Advanced Level Prototyping

Day 5, the final day, is focused on wrapping up loose ends and preparing the final presentation. MESA Co. is adamant that the final deliverable cannot be just a presentation (or a report or briefing), but rather the presentation is a vehicle for delivering and explaining the prototype that was created. 
The presentation is ideally made to senior leaders of the company, or other stakeholders who will demand a high level of rigour. This is what creates a real sense of urgency and meaning around the deadline, and brings out the “productivity magic” of the last two days.

The Finale

Where MESA shines is not in the explicit – the rules, structures, schedule, checklists – but in the tacit, the subtle, and the sublime. 
They have found a way to use these subtle touches not just to create a memorable experience, but to produce results that more heavy-handed methods can only dream of.

The Magic Is In The Details

The table represents the intersection of pleasure and commitment. The pleasure of family and friends sitting together and sharing a meal in the evening. And the commitment of getting down to business, of giving everything you have to the task at hand.Tables and the meals we eat on them are enveloped in rituals. From the way the table is set, to how the food is served, to how people sit and prepare themselves for eating, to how the food is actually eaten. Hundreds of these small rituals give us prescribed behaviours that we know will lead to the outcome we’re after – getting fed.

The Meaning Of MESA: A Table

There is a deeper purpose to these rituals that is easy to miss: they imbue the entire experience with significance. They make the process of getting calories into our bodies much more than the sum of its parts: an affirmation of our values, a time of connection with the people we love most, a reminder of what really matters at the end of a hectic day.

The Purpose Of The Ritual

MESA seeks to reintroduce and translate some of these rituals to the world of work. But not just for nostalgic purposes. It recreates them from the ground up, focusing them like a laser on one thing: producing results. It is a reinvention of the rituals that once bound us together in a shared purpose, working toward a common cause, but adapted to the modern context.

Adopting For The World Of Work

The experience begins with the venue. MESA Co. very carefully chooses locations that support the results they are trying to produce. The venues almost always have a “wow factor” to inspire the participants with an environment that stimulates all the senses. Entering the venue as a group and seeing the meticulously laid out table gives you a sense of the gravity and importance of the mission you are about to undertake.

The Venue

The table is, of course, central. It is laid out with precise measurements down to the centimeter, in order to put people just close enough to work together, while giving them enough space to work. Each place at the table has a name on it, like a wedding where every seating assignment is carefully chosen. The setting includes just the essential materials needed for the week, often including a notebook, pen, and bag. Even the color scheme is chosen with intention, often purposefully clashing with the client’s official colors to avoid the “business as usual” attitude.

The Colours And The Shapes

Every element in the space is chosen with intention: the chairs are comfortable for long hours of sitting and working; bags are collected in a central location so they don’t get in the way; the food is prepared simply and to avoid afternoon crashes; there are no clocks, giving the experience a sense of timelessness. There is a “Leave Me Alone” wall – a grid of pockets with participants’ names on them, where everyone is asked to leave their phones to remove the temptation.

No Clocks

The real purpose of all these decisions and rituals is to change participants’ behavior, away from the counterproductive habits we’ve developed, and toward a more focused way of working that is rarely possible in a distraction-filled workplace. As you find yourself in an environment purposefully free of the usual triggers and hooks, with a full staff dedicated to protecting you from every distraction or discomfort, your creativity is unleashed. People respect rituals more than rules, because rituals give us something meaningful in return for our compliance.

Rituals Not Rules: Changing The Context

Coming back to the everyday world, I’ve begun to notice a phenomenon everywhere: as soon as one person in a group takes out their phone or computer, everyone else is much more likely to do so as well. It only takes one person to check out for the atmosphere of human presence to start being sucked out of the room, like an airplane cabin with a punctured window. And once that air is gone, it’s very hard to bring people back.A quick glance at your notifications seems so harmless, but it communicates something unmistakable to others: there is somewhere you’d rather be, mentally if not physically.

The Real World: Everyday Problems With Notifications

I believe that people naturally want to focus, but only if that focus will be protected and respected. They want to give their best, but only if that effort will be put to good use. As the idealism of wanting to do a good job collides with the fragmented reality of modern schedules, we become resigned, gradually coming to resent the environment that seemingly won’t allow us to excel. What I see among MESA participants is a sigh of relief, followed by an unbelievable explosion of creative energy.

A Place To Focus

For years I’ve written on this blog about new ways of working that allow people to bend time, space, and the human mind to their advantage. How do I have

teamwork

Teamwork

creativity

Creativity

Introducing the MESA Method: Creating the Ideal Work Experience - Forte Labs

Customer support logs are a great place to reconnect with the purpose of your work (not to mention, they give you a gold mine of blog post ideas). 
Go to Twitter, LinkedIn, and Reddit to see what the audience is talking about. If possible, investigating branded communities or other groups is really helpful.

Talk directly to the end-user

You can also find inspiration from your team. Sometimes that means brainstorming with a colleague you don't usually talk to (diverse perspectives help a lot), but depending on your role, internal inspiration might be a bit more literal.Sometimes, if you're in a slump, you just need to pull in a fresh point-of-view.

Spotlight your team and community 

Getting out of your comfort zone can re-invigorate you—and teach you a thing or two along the way. Penny Adams, a pet photographer, found a burst of inspiration after attending a three-day workshop. Instead of losing productivity to the three days away, she was able to come back refreshed and ready to go.
If your work is starting to feel mundane, consider taking a course, attending a conference, or learning an adjacent skill. Finding a community of like-minded professionals can also expose you to new perspectives.

Invest in learning

If trying a new angle on the same topic isn't working, how about abandoning your niche altogether for a moment? Jason Bradwell, the Senior Director of Group Marketing and Communications at Deltatre, turns to fiction writing to give his ideas space and time to form.It's tempting to dive deeper into the subject matter to try and unlock the next insight, but reading something creative helps my brain relax without totally switching off. It's beyond just thinking outside the box—it's closing the box and putting it in storage.

Spend time on an entirely different topic

Focusing only on big goals (and how far away you are from them) is demoralizing. To help curb idea slumps in the future, set up a way to automate positivity. 
A simple weekly reminder in Slack for your team to share their wins helps everyone appreciate the journey.

Celebrate small wins

Sometimes you'll be sick of working on the same thing every day. That's ok! While you can't ignore the task at hand, you can lean into the lack of excitement. Feeling uninspired isn't always something you need to force yourself to fix, and in fact, boredom can be good for productivity.Anthony Garone, a technical content writer, finds that "boredom is the breeding ground for a great idea," and he creates that boredom by taking a walk (which can absolutely boost your creativity).

Let yourself be bored

I asked people what they do when they're in an inspirational slump, and it turns out everyone has thoughts—because everyone's been there. Here's what I learned.

How to get out of an inspiration slump at work

Find 100+ Facts and Tips on Productivity - Curated from inspiring sources like Books, Podcasts & Articles - Genuine Insights from like-minded Users like You!