Quick update this week. Still learning Rust and it’s been fun. I’m already halfway through the two books, filling in flash cards in the process. In Hands-on Rust, there’s been a few interesting things not Rust related, like the Entity component system architectural pattern or Dijkstra’s algorithm to calculate the shortest path, and I’m currently learning how to make more interesting dungeons with cellular automata.

Two weeks ago, I wrote about limiting time on social media and distractions, since it was taking too much time off my day and affecting me. My goal was not only to reduce my time online, but also to add times when I could just focus on being in the moment. On the blocking app, I set three profiles:

• Morning: blocks social media and work apps since I woke up until work starts.

• Wind down: blocks social media and frequent webs an hour before sleeping

• Focus: blocks during the “core” hours after work, where I do my learning, workouts, etc.

On top of these profiles, I also limited social media to a max of one hour a day (thirty minutes on the phone, and thirty on the tablet).

Not everybody can spare a few hours a day of their own time to get better at their craft, nor should they be expected to. Kids and family, responsibilities, hobbies…there are many reasons why one would not have time or would not want to spend time on the craft. Mental health and having a life are two of the strongest reasons: “we work to live, we don’t live to work”.

I’m one of those people that, if they wouldn’t need to work, they’d still create software for fun. In a way, it’s a hobby, and learning and improving makes me happy. Paradoxically, working as a developer is often not as satisfying, and there are many moments when I despise the industry.

With software being a hobby, I had to learn to separate it from work, and make sure that the work didn’t swallow my personal time. One thing is enjoying the journey of improvement and following my curiosity, and another thing is to give away my labour for free or spend extra hours on things that, when I’m on my deathbed, won’t matter at all. There’s a life to be lived.

In these times, the company that doesn’t adapt, that can’t be nimble, has fewer chances of survival. Many companies proclaim they want workers to learn, and advertise they encourage a learning environment. Workers that keep improving will be more productive, which will have an impact on the bottom line. Despite the fact that organisations want their employees to keep learning, initiatives are superficial: a workshop on how to learn more effectively, learning goals tracked against your progression, managers encouraging you to learn something related to work, etc. There’s an issue with all the superficial initiatives, companies want you to learn on your own time, without affecting “the work”, but benefiting from your new skills and knowledge anyway, isn’t that exploitative? If learning and improving is so important—and it is—, then it should be considered work.

Since last week, I’ve been putting more focus on consistently carving time to learn. One of the challenges was—and still is—reducing mindless distractions and being more aware of the present moment, instead of being on autopilot for long stretches.

Social media, specially the doom-scrolling part, is one of the biggest distractions. Like the crisps’ slogan: “once you scroll, you can’t stop”. It’s not always like that, but on the days when I’m not feeling great mentally or emotionally, it’s effortless to fall into it and evade.

I manage my social media time by blocking the apps during my focus hours. For example, in my phone there’s the distractions profile, that runs every work day from 7:30am to 9am and from 5pm to 8pm, and blocks the apps and websites I get the most distracted with. The profile mostly works, if only because when, out of habit, I open an app, it brings awareness to the moment and my emotions at the time, and that awareness acts as a circuit breaker.

Even if I’m not in “productive” mode, I don’t think spending lots of time on social media, constantly reading the news or always connected, is healthy for me. Perhaps I want to relax and do nothing, but doom-scrolling is not nothing, being hooked on mindless scrolling for hours takes the moment away, it sucks the awareness out of it.

At the core, I’m a software developer. No matter how much I learn about system thinking, product, design or any other area, at the end of the day, I still have to code and do it well.

I’ve been thinking about the craft and if I am where I want to be, or if I’m improving steadily. In some areas, definitely. In other areas, I feel stagnant, and not as confident as before. One of those areas is the actual coding. It’s not that I cannot write good code, it’s more about not growing enough in the past two years.

The plan is not to be a leetcode master or pass a tricky algorithm question in a FAANG interview. I’m looking for fluency, mastery, and a lot of practice in different challenges. Some of these challenges can only be found in real life situations in companies, but, meanwhile, I can practice on my own.

What’s the plan, then? It’s a work in progress. For now, I am eager to learn a new language at a good level, currently Rust but also thinking about Kotlin later on—the former for “pleasure” and the latter for “professional” use. I’ve chosen Rust because I want to get closer to the metal and reminiscence my experience with C++ when I started coding. Fun fact, Bjarne Stroustrup has released the 3rd edition of Programming Principles and Practices using C++, one of my favourite books.

If I were an Agile Coach, or rather, somebody whose job is to bring or improve ways of working or the way the company operates, there would not be a mention of Agile. No Scrum, no Lean, no nothing. Tell me about your pain, your situation, your context, the reasons you’re trying to change, where you’re trying to change and to whom you want to apply the change. The latter is of utmost importance. First, because it so happens that managers are the ones that hire coaches or consultants. Second, because there are managers who hire the coach to only look down, not up, to fix the workers, since they’re the problem—they’re not efficient enough, not fast enough or not good enough.

If I were that someone who's hired to improve things, I’d like to know if it’s worth it. Are they willing to look at themselves, change habits, and be comfortable being uncomfortable? If not, it’s probably not worth it. Do they want to hire me to implement Scrum, Shape Up or the newest trendy framework? Not worth it, I would rather not be part of making developers more miserable than they already are. Is the manager fixated on making everything and everyone efficient and doing things as fast as possible? I’m out.

I would only work with people that truly want to be helped and are open to trying new things.

There are only a few things I’d care about at a high level, and one of the more important ones is value. The sooner the value, the better. Notice I didn’t write faster, but sooner. Creating value sooner is not the same as building features fast. We could be building features fast and not get any value.