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Weekly Reflection #6 - Attention and Feedback Loops
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Each week, I share one insight. One piece of wisdom. One question to reflect on. (and a little Lagniappe) InsightOur attention is precious. It is a finite resource. When I struggle to make progress on a larger goal, it’s because my attention is spread too thin, my brain is overloaded with context switching costs. The antidote is twofold: reduce what you’re paying attention to, and compress the feedback loop on what remains. Ship something valuable. Learn. Repeat. Wisdom“All art is a work in progress. It’s helpful to see the piece we’re working on as an experiment. One in which we can’t predict the outcome. Whatever the result, we will receive useful information that will benefit the next experiment.” — Rick Rubin, The Creative Act
ReflectionWhat’s the smallest thing you could ship this week that would teach you something valuable? Lagniappe
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Weekly Reflections Newsletter
Practical insights on platform engineering, developer experience, and building teams that ship. Each issue is written to be useful, actionable, and applicable. No filler, no promotions-only emails. Enter your email and sign up for free right now.
Each week, I share one insight. One piece of wisdom. One question to reflect on. (and a little Lagniappe) Insight Most things in life are out of our control. This is only exacerbated for those of us who work in complex systems. We can't predict the next outage, re-org, or technology shift. What we can control is our ability to respond to spontaneous changes. In Zen, there is a concept called "mushin", a mind free from distraction, able to respond fluidly to whatever arises. When we cultivate...
Each week, I share one insight. One piece of wisdom. One question to reflect on. (and a little Lagniappe) Insight Protect the simplicity of your foundational systems. I’ve been reading Designing Data-Intensive Applications for Book Overflow. I can’t believe I hadn’t read this book sooner. It’s a goldmine of practical wisdom with a deep exploration of tradeoffs. One insight that stood out is that the larger and more reliable a complex system needs to be, the simpler its building blocks must...
Each week, I share one insight. One piece of wisdom. One question to reflect on. (and a little Lagniappe) Insight The pressure to ship faster has never been higher. AI tooling, shorter cycles, rising delivery expectations: everything seems to be accelerating. If you aren’t careful, you can easily slip into what Cal Newport calls Pseudo-Productivity, or what I like to call busyness theatre, the illusion of being productive without actually making meaningful progress. Counterintuitively, the...