The 10x Lesson

The 10x programmer, the 10x strategy expert, the 10x surgeon.

This is something we are always in search of. The human who is playing at a different level, generating work that changes everything.

The thing is: a 1x contributor can’t become a 10x merely by working ten times as hard. The physics of time won’t allow it, certainly, but it’s also because 10x doesn’t work on the same axis. It’s not about more effort. It’s about more insight.

In order to make that forward leap, you need to trust yourself. To create space. To have the discipline to say no to distractions or even to projects that put you back into the 1x mode.

The reason that there are so few 10x contributors isn’t that we lack innate talent. It’s that our systems and our self-talk seduce us into believing that repeating 1x work to exhaustion is a safer path.

-Seth Godin.

Destiny is all

A video by Matt Mahurin.



“You start at the end. You start with emptiness. You start with nothing. You start with the void… I lost my mother when I was 14. I learned so much from her vanishing. I wish it had never happened. I wish that I had been older. But as a young teenager staring hard into that void, this is where a certain life-force gathered pace in me. Where a certain defiance began. To defy the odds. To defy people’s expectation. To defy death itself. To rob it of it’s power over me or anyone else…
-Bono.

For Silke after Heidelberg

The dance of the possible!

“Nobody tells people who are beginners, and I really wish someone had told this to me… all of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste.… there’s a gap… for the first couple years that you’re making stuff, what you’re making isn’t so good…. It’s not that great.… It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not quite that good.

But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re making is kind of a disappointment to you…. A lot of people never get past this phase.… they quit.

And the thing I would say to you with all my heart is that most everybody I know who does interesting creative work, they went through a phase of years [of this]…. Everybody goes through that…. And the most important possible thing you can do is do a lot of work. Do a huge volume of work… it’s only by actually going through a volume of work that you are actually going to catch up and close that gap. And the work you’re making will be as good as your ambitions.”

-Ira Glass, host of This American Life, explaines how these skill gaps work against us.

Agile 2018

Back in 2001 when the word agile appeared it was a manifesto – a set of ideas, the term “agile” also served to group a bunch of tools and techniques which could make software development “better.” It painted a picture of a shining city on a hill we all wanted to live in.

Agile was a place you wanted to go, it was a journey you wanted to make, it offered hope. More important as the tools – sprints, stand-ups, etc. – and approaches – just in time, last responsible moment, test first – were the stories agile people told. These were stories of a better world, of that shining city on the hill.

Today everyone is agile. Nobody is promoting traditional (“waterfall”) working. Not being agile is about as popular as leprosy.

Agile won the war. Agile is respectable and everyone is agile now. Big business rush to be agile, Governments want to be agile, consultants will sell you agile.

But agile lost the peace. While many say they are agile, few software developers live in a shiny city. The place they live in might be better than the place they came from but it doesn’t quite live up to the dream.

11.11.2018

100 years ago.


And I am thankful that my freedom today was earned by so many who risked, and in many cases suffered, death in order to defend it.

Who decides?

Always the Money: without control over money, it doesn’t matter how much you talk or dream of improvements, or how many grand designs you may imagine, because nothing will come of it when you don’t have financial sovereignty. Someone else will always make the final decision.

U2 are back home for four shows in Dublin at 3Arena.

Helping Others

“What do you want me to do for you?”  Mark 10:51

Isn’t it easy to do something for someone? Isn’t it easy to know what we should do and to do it? Surely, it’s a simple matter of getting in to a situation and getting on with the task? It’s simple – isn’t it?

Jesus did things differently. If people are to assume rights and responsibilities for themselves they must have the dignity and the power to do so; sometimes they need to be pushed into realizing they are grown ups, able to decide and act for themselves. Bartimaeus has been a man who was powerless, a man without dignity; a blind man who sat at the roadside despised by passers-by who would have seen his blindness as a curse from God.

Jesus could have just thought, “I know what Bartimaeus wants”, but He knows the importance of human dignity, He knows the importance of a sense that we are responsible for our own decisions. How can we fully respond to him unless we have a sense that we have the power and the independence to do so? How can we be grown up if we are not prepared to think and to do things for ourselves?

Watch what Jesus does in the story. Jesus stopped and said, “Call him.'”

Why does Jesus not just go to where Bartimaeus is sitting? Or if he does not wish to walk over to him, why does he not just say, “Tell him he’s healed”?

He gives Bartimaeus the opportunity to do something for himself and he challenges him to let go of his security. “Throwing his cloak aside,” Bartimaeus gets up, he acts in response to the call, but there is more to it than that. The cloak has been Bartimaeus’ shelter; it has been his home through all those many days at the roadside; it has been his protection against those who would have done him violence. Bartimaeus lets go of the very thing that was literally his comfort blanket and he goes to meet with Jesus. Bartimaeus is not compelled nor is he carried by anyone, he stands on his own two feet; Jesus meets him as an independent person with his own dignity.

Even then, Jesus does not impose a solution. He does not say, “I know what you need, I’m going to do it for you.” He asks Bartimaeus, “What do you want me to do for you?” He allows Bartimaeus responsibility for that decision; it is probably the first time in his life that Bartimaeus has made a choice. Of course, the answer is obvious, but what is important is that it’s Bartimaeus’ answer, it’s him deciding for himself. “Rabbi, I want to see.”

Then look at the conclusion of the story, Jesus recognizes that Bartimaeus has been a partner in the process. Jesus doesn’t say, “I have healed you,”, he says to Bartimaeus, “Go, your faith has healed you.”

It is through the partnership between them that Bartimaeus’ life is changed. Note the order of things: Jesus calls, Bartimaeus responds; Jesus asks, Bartimaeus responds. Then, when Bartimaeus has been treated as a person of dignity and independence, the change comes: “Immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus along the road.”

Jesus understood what was needed for human beings to grow, to become independent, to take responsibility for their own lives, to become the people they have the potential to be. It is a lesson that applies as much in our own society and economy as it does in distant corners of Africa.

“What do you want me to do for you?” and each person deserves the dignity to be able to answer.
-Rev. Ian Poulton.

Social Media 2018

Mainly for Stephen and Marlon to ponder:

"When your ideas are spreading, when your work is remarkable, when your organization has built a social ratchet that works, one of the side effects will be a significant social media presence. People will talk about you in ways that they like to talk… online.

On the other hand, if you spend all your time beginning at the end, grooming your social network, tweezing your Insta posts, hyping your tweets–nothing much is going to happen.

The simple proof of this is that brands with ten or twenty times the social media impact almost never have ten or twenty times as many people working as “social media specialists.”

And worth noting: The Mona Lisa has a huge social media presence. Her picture is everywhere. But she doesn’t tweet. She’s big on social media because she’s an icon, but she’s not an icon because she’s big on social media.

The narrative of social media grooming is a seductive one, but it’s as much of a dead end as spending an extra hour picking out which tie to wear before giving a speech."
-Seth Godin.

It all started in the sixties

and I was there. Nicely done Sir Paul, the soundtrack to my life too.

At 27 minutes somswhat longer than the videos I usually show here but well worthwhile for all "older" Beatles fans. Thanks to Steve for the link.

perbit cloud

Stufe 1, Zukunftsvision Dezember 2009 und noch aktuell möchte ich behaupten. 

being Christian

The single most important Christian teaching is that sins can be forgiven. If sins cannot be forgiven, what is the alternative? 

I can think of two:

1. Bearing grudges forever ("I can never forgive him for..."); or
2. Lowering standards ("Everybody does some of that"; "boys will be boys").

We all know people who operate the first way and people who operate the second way.

The first way will eat you up from the inside; the second will make you into a scoundrel. ("What other people can get away with, I can too...")

Harmful acts that result from unawareness, inexperience, or honest errors of fact are not sins and do not need to be forgiven. But this category can't be broadened to include deliberate malice or lawlessness.

Forgiving a sin is like forgiving a debt. You don't claim it is not a debt; you may know the exact amount; but you choose to bear the expense yourself.

Zooropa, U2 and the "Loss Trilogy"

Many thanks to Ian Ryan for this.
I also believe that, intentional or not, U2 make trilogies of albums. These are the trilogies they've created, and what the parts of the trilogies represent:

The Growth Trilogy
Boy - growth of self
October - growth of faith
War - growth of purpose

The America Trilogy
The Unforgettable Fire - America from a distance
The Joshua Tree - America up close
Rattle And Hum - Inside America

The Loss Trilogy
Achtung Baby - loss of love
Zooropa - loss of purpose
Pop - loss of faith

The Acceptance Trilogy
All That You Can't Leave Behind - acceptance of mortality
How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb - acceptance of adulthood
No Line On The Horizon - acceptance of place

Zooropa shows up in U2 concerts when the band need either utter sincerity or utter chaos. "Stay (Faraway, So Close!)" arrives when the band needs a sincere, heartfelt song in the middle of an acoustic part of a concert. U2 performed "The Wanderer" only once live, when they wanted to pay deep tribute to Johnny Cash in his hometown of Nashville. "Zooropa" showed up as a chaotic tornado of light during the 360 tour, and again during the Innocence + Experience tour to communicate the horror and desperation refugees felt as they traveled to Europe. Zooropa is an album of emotional extremes. It is not anger and peace, nor love and hate. It is fear and hope, adoration and being lost, the calling cards of U2's best work.

Johnny Cash at the end imitates the voice of God, with all his confusing wisdom and conflicting instructions. He sets out goals that can never be achieved, a sanctified purpose with a bible and a gun, all in one song. We see him here getting frustrated and old because the world isn't still innocent.

Acrobat 2018

The best Video of Acrobat, edited by Paulo Vetri, great job done here. Best of Achtung Baby.



"And I must be an acrobat
To talk like this and
Act like that."

Public speaking

Preparing for my speech at perbit's 35th anniversary last week was once again quite difficult and time consuming. Overcoming stage fright is still quite an ordeal for me and it brought to mind once again Seth Godin's rules for presentations. So one more time for anyone interested:

1. Make it shorter. No extra points for filling your time.
2. Be really clear about what it’s for. If the presentation works, what will change? Who will be changed? Will people take a different course of action because of your work? If not, then why do you do a presentation?
3. Don’t use slides as a teleprompter. If you have details, write them up in a short memo and give it to us after the presentation.
4. Don’t sing, don’t dance, don’t tell jokes. If those three skills are foreign to you, this is not a good time to try them out.

Be here now. The reason you’re giving a presentation and not sending us a memo is that your personal presence, your energy and your humanity add value. Don’t hide them. Don’t use a prescribed format if that format doesn’t match the best version of you.

And a bonus: the best presentation is one you actually give. Don’t hide. Don’t postpone it. People need to hear from you.

It went O.K but when I see the video I know I still have much to learn. Thanks Steve.

35 Jahre perbit

und 70 Jahre Richard Manuel.

Nachträglich vielen Dank an alle perbit'ler für die Geburtstagsgrüße und Geschenke letzten Januar.

Mein Leben als Rentner mit 70 und was mache ich jetzt?

Ich wurde oft in Trossingen während den letzten 6 Jahre gefragt, was machst Du jetzt? Seit 2013 bin ich Rentner. Das bin ich heute noch. Allerdings damit ich meine gewöhnten Lebens- Standard beibehalten kann, gehe ich arbeiten. Es ist eine Art irische Pensionierung. 

"Ich bin sehr damit beschäftigt, nichts zu tun
Den ganzen Tag arbeite ich hart daran
Dinge zu finden, die ich nicht tun muss.
Ich bin täglich damit beschäftigt, nirgendwohin zu gehen
Ist das nicht fast ein Vergehen?

Ich wäre gern darüber unglücklich, aber
Ich habe nie die Zeit dazu!"

Nach Bismarcks Einschätzung wäre ich vor fünf Jahren gestorben, also sind die Tage, Wochen und Monate die noch kommen eine Zugabe. Die traditionelle Grenze zum alten Kerl liegt jetzt hinter mir und ich stelle fest, ich bin ganz zufrieden mit dem allgemeinen Zustand des  „Rentner-Seins“; Das weil….

• Ich bin gesund. Das hat vielleicht mehr mit Glück als Verstand zu tun aber ich habe auch einiges dafür getan
• Ich weiß wer ich bin und was ich gut kann
• Ich bin ein freier Mann, in ein freies Land
• Ich bin nicht allein. Ich gehe durch’s Leben mit meiner Familie und Freunde neben mir
• Ich kenne meine Grenzen und habe mich damit abgefunden
• Ich habe mein Alltag so arrangiert, dass ich nur das tun muss was ich tun möchte. 

Dies ist mehr als Zufriedenstellend. Ich könnte mehrere Bücher darüber schreiben, wie es zustande kam, mache ich aber wahrscheinlich nicht.

Meine Großmutter wurde 90 Jahre alt.
Das ist auch mein Ziel, und abgesehen von möglichen nicht vorhersehbarer Ereignisse ist das im 21. Jahrhundert gut machbar. Dies bedeutet, dass ich womöglich zwanzig Jahre Zeit noch habe. Das ist eine lange Zeit und eine kurze Zeit; vor zwanzig Jahren habe ich mit Microsoft Basic Programme geschrieben, es kommt mir vor wie gestern.  

Aber meine Zukunftsstrategie steht schon fest:

• Ich werde weiterhin wie seit 1968 programmieren
• Ich werde meine Geschichten erzählen;
• Ich werde Geist und Körper trainieren;
• Ich werde die Gesellschaft meiner Familie und Freunde weiterhin genießen;

Und das, insbesondere heute Abend in Nussdorf bei Theo. Danke fürs kommen und viel Spaß. 

Should you give up?

There are people who have read far more books than you have, and you will certainly never catch up. Your website began with lousy traffic statistics, in fact, they all do. Should you even bother?

The course you’re doing –you’re a few lessons behind the leaders. Time to call it quits?

Quitting merely because you’re behind is a trap, a form of hiding that feels safe, but isn’t. The math is simple: whatever you switch to because you quit is another place you’re going to be behind as well.

It’s not a race, it’s a journey. And the team that scores first doesn’t always win.

Toü 10 AWS-EC2 Customers 2018

Based on EC2 monthly spend, here are the top 10 Amazon AWS customers:

1. Netflix - $19 million
   
2. Twitch - $15 million
3. LinkedIn - $13 million
4. Facebook - $11 million
5. Turner Broadcasting - $10 million
6. BBC - $9 million
7. Baidu - $9 million
8. ESPN - $8 million
9. Adobe - $8 million
10. Twitter - $7 million

Jeff Bezos is very excited about the AWS business and he believes – like the rest of the leadership team does – that in the fullness of time - it is very possible that AWS could be the biggest business at Amazon.

Rob Pike's 5 Rules of Programming

Rule 1. You can't tell where a program is going to spend its time. Bottlenecks occur in surprising places, so don't try to second guess and put in a speed hack until you've proven that's where the bottleneck is.

Rule 2. Measure. Don't tune for speed until you've measured, and even then don't unless one part of the code overwhelms the rest.

Rule 3. Fancy algorithms are slow when n is small, and n is usually small. Fancy algorithms have big constants. Until you know that n is frequently going to be big, don't get fancy. (Even if n does get big, use Rule 2 first.)

Rule 4. Fancy algorithms are buggier than simple ones, and they're much harder to implement. Use simple algorithms as well as simple data structures.

Rule 5. Data dominates. If you've chosen the right data structures and organized things well, the algorithms will almost always be self-evident. Data structures, not algorithms, are central to programming.

Pike's rules 1 and 2 restate Tony Hoare's famous maxim "Premature optimization is the root of all evil."

Ken Thompson rephrased Pike's rules 3 and 4 as "When in doubt, use brute force.".

Rules 3 and 4 are instances of the design philosophy KISS.

Rule 5 was previously stated by Fred Brooks in The Mythical Man-Month. Rule 5 is often shortened to "write stupid code that uses smart objects".

You were right all along!

There's a hierarchy in the adoption of new techniques and approaches, particularly in the area of cloud software:

1. You were right all along: The thing you were waiting for is here.
2. All of the cool kids are using it now: Take a look at the companies who are already offering solutions. That strategy you didn't care about so much -you need to care about it now.
3. I know you said that this would never work, but it's working.

It's almost impossible to get someone to try something new today if they also have to admit that they were wrong yesterday.

Amazon AWS 2018

From Jeff Bezos' Shareholder Letter, December 2017:

AWS – It’s exciting to see Amazon Web Services, a $20 billion revenue run rate business, accelerate its already healthy growth. AWS has also accelerated its pace of innovation – especially in new areas such as machine learning and artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, and serverless computing.

In 2017, AWS announced more than 1,400 significant services and features, including Amazon SageMaker, which radically changes the accessibility and ease of use for everyday developers to build sophisticated machine learning models. Tens of thousands of customers are also using a broad range of AWS machine learning services, with active users increasing more than 250 percent in the last year, spurred by the broad adoption of Amazon SageMaker.

Missing from your Job Description

If you're working in an office, here are some of the checklist items that might have been omitted from the job description:

• Add energy to every conversation
  
• Ask why
• Find obsolete things on your task list and remove them
• Treat customers better than they expect
• Offer to help co-workers before they ask
• Feed the plants
• Leave things more organized than you found them
• Invent a moment of silliness
• Highlight good work from your peers
• Find other great employees to join the team
• Cut costs
• Help invent a new product or service that people really want
• Get smarter at your job through training or books
• Encourage curiosity
• Surface and highlight difficult decisions
• Figure out what didn't work
• Start a club
• Smile a lot.

Now that it's easier than ever to outsource a job to someone cheaper (or a robot) there needs to be a really good reason for someone to be in the office. Here's to finding several.

(-Thanks again to Seth Godin.)

Made me smile

My left foot

My left foot is much better this week. It has been causing me to limp severly and stop running since January. Went to a surgeon last week and he recommended an "MRT". 

Had that yesterday.

Now I'm waiting for the report, hopefully o surgery required. Next appointment on Thursday. Running still out of the question. Still I have managed to be able to go dog walking and to write and write code, even.

My brain is learning to cope. At all levels. And the sense of humour we develope with age is helping a lot.

300 Seconds

How many decisions or commitments would end up more positively if you had a five-minute snooze button on hand?

The hasty one-liner, the rushed reaction, the action we end up regretting--all of them can be eliminated with judicious use of the snooze button. It's a shame there isn't one built in to our computers when we're communicating online...

When in doubt, go for a walk around the block.

The Bannister Method

Roger Bannister did something in 1954 that many people had said was impossible.

He ran a mile in less than four minutes.

The thing is, he didn't accomplish this by running a mile as fast as he could.

He did it by setting out to run a mile in one second faster than four minutes. Bannister analyzed the run, stride by stride. He knew how long each split needed to be. He had colleagues work in a relay, pacing him on each and every section of the mile.

He did something impossible, but he did it by creating a series of possible steps.

It's easy to get hung up on, "as possible." As fast, as big, as much, as cheap, as small... 

The Bannister Method is to obsess about "enough" instead.

Roger Bannister passed away at the age of 88 on Sunday 4th March, 2018.

BBC Radio in 2012, Sir Roger Bannister speaks to Eleanor Oldroyd about the day he became the first man to run a mile under four minutes.
(25 Minutes).

Billy Graham and Bono

With the passing of the Rev. Billy Graham today at the age of 99, it seems appropriate to share Bono’s poem. He wrote it about Graham when he visited him and his family on March 11, 2002. (The poem and photographs are on display at The Billy Graham Library)

May you rest in peace, Billy Graham.

U2, the psalms, Billy Graham, words worth following.

Walt Whitman

“After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, love, and so on — have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear — what remains?”

Walt Whitman asked this in his diary as he contemplated what makes life worth living after a paralytic stroke, then answered:

 “Nature remains; to bring out from their torpid recesses, the affinities of a man or woman with the open air, the trees, fields, the changes of seasons — the sun by day and the stars of heaven by night.”

What shall I do today?

“I began to appreciate time. There is nothing more wonderful to have in one’s life, than time. I don’t believe people get enough of it nowadays.

I was excessively fortunate in my childhood and youth, just because I had so much time. You wake up in the morning, and even before you are properly awake you are saying to yourself: ‘Now, what shall I do with today?’ You have the choice, it is there, in front of you, and you can plan as you please.

I don’t mean that there were not a lot of things (duties, we called them) I had to do–of course there were. There were jobs to be done in the house: days when you cleaned silver photograph frames, days when you darned your stockings, days when you learnt a chapter of Great Events in History, a day when you had to go down the town and pay all the tradesmen’s bills. Letters and notes to write, scales and exercises, embroidery–but they were all things that lay in my choice, to arrange as I pleased. I could plan my day, I could say,

‘I think I’ll leave my stockings until this afternoon; I will go down town in the morning and I will come back by the other road and see whether that tree had come into blossom yet.’

Always when I woke up, I had the feeling which I am sure must be natural to all of us, a joy in being alive. I don’t say you feel it consciously–you don’t–but there you are, you are alive, and you open your eyes, and here is another day; another step, as it were, on your journey to an unknown place.

That very exciting journey which is your life.

Not that it is necessarily going to be exciting as a life, but it will be exciting to you because it is your life. That is one of the great secrets of existence, enjoying the gift of life that has been given to you.”

-Agatha Christie, autobiography.

Where did you go to school?

An interesting question, perhaps, but irrelevant to a job interview. The place you spent six years in thirty years ago makes very little contribution to the job you're going to do. Here's what matters:

The way you approach your work.

What have you built? What have you led? How do you make decisions? What's your reserve of emotional strength like? How do you act when no one is looking?

You are not your resume. You are the trail you've left behind, the people you've influenced, the work you've done.

26th Jan. 2018 Reggie, Philip, Richard, Arthur

Es war Mountjoy School, Clontarf, Dublin.

New years day

Happy New Year zu allen perbit'ler, insbesondere unser Kollege Ralf Scheidl. Programmierer und Freund seit 1987.