I'm a Woz, not a Jobs. I write this in reference to the personalities of Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, the founders of Apple, although I would never claim to be as intelligent or as effective as either of them. Although I do have a strong product mindset and deep interests in usability and user experience, at the end of the day, like Wozniak, I want to be a good programmer, not a good businessman. I want to learn, not earn.

Some people are motivated by money, and that's completely reasonable. It pays the bills! It's just not who I am. It's not who I've ever been. Money, metrics, status: I care about those things like penguins care about Pilates. I'd rather watch paint dry.

Don't get me wrong. I can be deeply motivated under the right circumstances. You can hardly pull me away from the computer when I'm learning, iterating, honing my craft, and producing something I'm proud of. That's where I find flow. “Faster, faster, faster, more, more, more!” just because that’s what your boss wants? No, that doesn't work on me.

I'm amazed that style of management works on anyone, to be honest, but it must. I suppose some people who are motivated by promotions and prestige can clench their teeth and bear it. Maybe they even enjoy the challenge. Me? I don't see the point. Life is short, and nobody spends their final moments reminiscing about their corner office or their fancy car. Let's be honest, those things lost their luster after one week.

I regret not being more clear about this aspect of my personality in the past. Moving forward, I want to embrace who I am. If others don't like it, that's fine, but they're probably not the right person for me, and I'm probably not the right person for them.

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It is really true what philosophy tells us, that life must be understood backwards. But with this, one forgets the second proposition, that it must be lived forwards. A proposition which, the more it is subjected to careful thought, the more it ends up concluding precisely that life at any given moment cannot really ever be fully understood; exactly because there is no single moment where time stops completely in order for me to take position [to do this]: going backwards.

—Søren Kierkegaard, as translated by Palle Jorgensen

This reminds me of what Steve Jobs said in his 2005 Stanford Commencement Address: “You can't connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backwards.” Based on the stories I've heard of Jobs, I wouldn't be surprised if he knew he was borrowing from Kierkegaard.

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I've come to feel that any belief, philosophy, or endeavor taken too seriously causes extreme harm. The most benevolent religious commitments taken to the extreme go completely off the rails, as do the most reasonable philosophies taken to their furthest logical conclusions. Even attempting to do no harm perfectly is likely to do immense harm, albeit in some unexpected way.

I'm self-conscious that it's taken me so long to see this, because it seems so obvious now. It only became clear after learning a bit about Nietzsche's criticism of philosophical stoicism, including that it leads adherents to act callously toward others and forego the most important challenges in life. I haven't noticed stoicism encouraging that kind of attitude, but when taken to its extreme, perhaps it does! That's one more reason for me to proceed with relative caution, rather than thoughtlessly adopting the worst of that worldview. Learning more about cults, in particular the Heaven's Gate UFO suicide cult, also helped me see this. Cult members, even those who commit terrible acts—especially those who commit terrible acts!—are usually not evil or stupid. In fact, they're often very intelligent and they almost always have the best intentions. They're just extremely committed. (That's true of members, anyway. Many cult leaders are so deranged that they hurt others even when they know better. Others are true believers. Some are both. For many cult leaders, I suspect the line between fact and fantasy is extremely porous.)

If you find yourself in the 99^th percentile of some endeavor, stop, slow down, and re-evaluate. A little common sense goes a long way, and at that high level of attainment, that's what you need most.

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I'm not an oracle, and it's usually easier to solve other people's problems than my own… or at least seem to. Even still, when others ask me for advice, I try to help them consider what they could do to improve the situation. I take this approach even when the advisee is the recipient of someone else's bad behavior. If someone is being mistreated by their boss, for example, I might suggest that they quit, talk to HR, or ask for an internal transfer.

Sometimes, the pushback doesn't take very long. “They're the jerk. Why don't you tell them to be different!?”

Of course, the other person often is the jerk, and I will try to tell that person to be better, if I can. At the same time, bad people—the truly awful, cruel, uncaring people of the world, the people others complain about—they usually don't take advice. They don't care what I have to say. If they were so reasonable, they probably wouldn't be causing this problem in the first place.

To that point, I try to remind the listener, “you're the only person you can control.”

It's not fair, but remembering that may be the only strategy that has any chance of succeeding. Jerks are everywhere, and if our happiness depends on them being better, we're probably not going to be very happy.

None of this is to excuse the importance of listening to others and trying to understand their pain without trying to fix anything. I could always do a better job of that.

If you do want something to change, though, focus on what you can do differently. It's not fair, but it may be the only solution worth attempting, because you're the only person you can control.

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I want to help create a better world. That involves persuading people to see things differently—to care more about animal suffering, for example—but I also need to be sure I'm not pushing people away.

Little does more harm to a cause than the perception that its adherents are crazy. I've never heard anyone say, “Gosh, vegans are nuts… I should be one of them!” Purity tests are similarly destructive. Want to make an enemy out of a potential ally? Chastise them for not being good enough. On the contrary, celebrating small steps in the right direction achieves so much more than demanding perfection. (Guess who else isn't perfect. I'll give you a hint: you can find them in your mirror. Mine, too.)

Protesting outside KFC and throwing red paint on fur coats probably increases animal suffering, on balance, by deepening the resistance and habits of those who oppose ethical veganism. Similarly, having a meltdown when someone disagrees with one's economic vision probably hinders the economic justice they're after.

For that reason, I'm so frustrated and disappointed that social media fosters extremism and encourages users to preach to the choir. It's worse than a massive opportunity cost. It actually leads us to harm those we are trying to help.

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Progress bars—those little horizontal bars that fill from left to right as your laptop or phone updates—are notoriously unreliable. One moment, a progress bar might be 10% full. The next thing you know, the work is done. If a written estimate is provided (e.g., “10 minutes”), you might notice it change dramatically in an instant.

As it turns out, building accurate progress bars is extremely difficult. In most cases, it's almost impossible for the computer to know how long the work will take without actually doing it.

This is the problem of software project estimation in microcosm.

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You get what you measure.

If cost is fixed and you measure speed, you'll get speed, but not quality. If cost is fixed and you measure quality, you'll get quality, but not speed. If you measure page views or ad impressions, your company may become a clickbait factory. If you measure messages sent within your app, your app might begin boosting outrageous content that makes people argue all the time. (Yes, I'm talking about social media.) If you're a bank and you measure account openings, your employees just might commit fraud to “get those numbers up.”

Incentives rule the world. If you decide to incentivize something by making a measurement a goal, be sure you understand the unintended consequences. Better yet, don't make a measurement a goal at all. As they say, “when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” In other words, when a metric becomes a goal, people will inevitably game the system, and you might be surprised by what they do to “win.”

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“Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.”

—John Lennon paraphrasing others in his song “Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)

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Be more like Buckethead. Do what you love, even if other people find it strange. Those same people might also find it beautiful.

Yes, many artists wear costumes on stage, but Buckethead, or Brian Carroll, clearly sees the world differently even when he's not performing. He's a soft-spoken, shy, reportedly very sweet man who sometimes gives interviews through hand puppets. He writes songs about robots and Michael Jordan and his love for his parents. He hands out toys and does nunchuck demonstrations on stage. He's said his greatest goal is to build a theme park, but he's also afraid to call others on the phone to talk business. All the while, he's one of the world's most skilled, creative, prolific, and underappreciated electric guitarists.

Here's one of his most well-known songs, “Soothsayer”. A lot of the songs on Colma are fantastic, and I'm currently enjoying “Padmasana”, which I forgot about until now. I also like the soundscape album Bucketheadland (remember how he wants to build a theme park?), but it's hard to find online, and that link may not work for long.

Be more like Buckethead. Be more brave in doing what you love.

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“People don't want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter inch hole!”

—Theodore Levitt

I read this today in the 2013 edition of The Design of Everyday Things, and oh goodness, is it true. For the vast majority of people, software is a means to an end. How easily we geeks forget that. The world is not like us.

My mother doesn't want to use Facebook. She wants to connect with relatives. She certainly doesn't want to remember her password, complete multi-factor authentication challenges, create a profile, change her settings, add people as friends, upload images, check her notifications… She wants to connect with relatives. What we techy types call “fun,” what we enjoy perfecting and tinkering with, my mom calls “garbage that gets in the way of what I actually want to do.”

No one wants to use your software. Well, no one but the geeks like us, and even we don't want to tinker with everything. Most people most of the time just want to get things done.

How different would software look if we remembered that?

On the password front, I'm certainly not suggesting we sacrifice digital security for user experience—being hacked isn't a great experience, anyway—but let's use something better, like passkeys. They're just as secure, if not more secure, and they're practically invisible. People hardly even notice themselves using them. That's a good thing.

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