Category Archives: Personal

Making Happiness a Priority

My running coach, Holly Johnson, wrote a book a few years ago called How To Make Feeling Good Your Priority [ad] (my review). In it, she wrote about how she applies her running mindset to everyday life. Specifically, when feeling bad during a run (tired, hurt, etc), she would find a way to feel good right now. She’d seek one small adjustment that could make an immediate difference. Her aim was to stop a bad moment from becoming a bad day.

Related to that, I once got some advice to maintain a list of small things you could do to make you happy. They could be quick, or more involved. Perhaps some are situational and some could be done whenever. The idea is that you could use them to substitute out a bad habit or for a pick-me-up. Like, instead of doom scrolling, you listen to a song you like.

In that spirit, I have developed a list of small things that make me happy (or will make me feel like I had a good day). I am not trying to get all of them every day. They’re meant as a way to fill time with things that lift me up instead of doing things I would prefer to do less of. A lot of them are tied to my 2026 theme of Fuerte y Suerte, but not all.

  1. Work towards 10,000 steps
  2. Hang on a pull up bar (there’s one in my office)
  3. Sit in a deep squat for 5 minutes
  4. Go for a walk outside
  5. Work towards my daily protein goal
  6. Read a book
  7. Do Morning Pages
  8. Journal
  9. Selfie Video (5 min) to practice extemporaneous speaking
  10. Call, text, or meet with a friend
  11. Listen to Spanish (Podcast, Music)
  12. Fill a page with Spanish writing
  13. Code on a side project
  14. Tidy
  15. Meditate
  16. Quality time with my wife
  17. Listen to music
  18. Sketch

One nice thing is many of them can be combined. I can go for a walk outside, get steps, and listen to Spanish Music. Or go for walk outside with my wife. Read a book on the elliptical. I did my morning pages in Spanish yesterday. Many take just a few minutes. A hang is less than a minute right now. I can do it while waiting for a compile (jk, I use Python).

And, if I do want to just watch some YouTube, I can sit in a squat or find something in Spanish to watch. Or find some music videos (and dance).

If you are looking to find a way to break a bad habit, a list like this is useful to implement a substitution strategy. If January 1st makes you motivated to make change, then Use Motivation To Program Your Environment—make the list and put it somewhere you can see it.

2025 Blog Roundup

In 2025, I published 112 posts. Here’s what was on my mind.

My biggest accomplishment in 2025 was publishing my book, Swimming in Tech Debt. Here are some posts about the process:

If you want to read sample chapters from the book, sign up here:

I wrote a lot about code reviews.

I completely changed my dev stack from Node/React to Django/HTMX

These were some of my favorites

The most popular post from this year (mostly because of search hits) is Supernote Manta: Review at Eight Weeks. I updated it with my current thinking in How Digital Journaling is Better Than Paper.

Fuerte Y Suerte

Instead of New Year’s Resolutions, I pick a yearly theme to help me make progress on my goals.

In 2023, it was to Make Art with Friends, which led to me joining Toastmasters and a sketch group. I also started a meetup for local software developers. In early 2024, I extended it by joining The Useful Authors group. Then, in 2024, I chose the theme of “Heavy Lifting” to encompass my fitness program and the work it would take to write a book. Last year, it was Just Keep Swimming, which meant to keep working on my book, Swimming in Tech Debt, and get it done.

This year is about strength training, learning Spanish, and marketing my book. I chose to represent that with the theme “Fuerte Y Suerte”, which means “Strong and Lucky” in Spanish.

The Strong and Spanish part are clear. By lucky, I mean in the sense of writing a bunch of content on this blog, my podcast, my email list, LinkedIn, and other places and hoping that one of those things takes off (as I described in Blog Posts, Randomness, and Optionality). I think of each post as a lottery ticket with a low fixed cost and huge upside potential. Randomness is the Great Creator.

In the past, this led to My Guest Article on Tech Debt for the Pragmatic Engineer and making the front-page of HN, which I described here: My “Show HN” Follow-Up for “Swimming in Tech Debt”. In my life, it has led to writing a book for Manning, being invited to conferences, jobs, etc.

A couple of days ago, I revived my podcast, and the next episode will be about getting lucky.

Perfection Is Not An Accident

I took the Seven train into Manhattan often as a teenager. At Queensboro Plaza, I could see the billboard for Eagle Electric with their motto: “Perfection Is Not An Accident”. I think about it a lot. But, I probably have not seen it in person since the nineties. It’s gone now.

Until recently, I didn’t even remember the name of the company, just the motto. I wrote a little bit about this in my book, discussing the power of pithy, memorable value statements.

A year ago, I was at the New York Historical Society, and I saw a painting of it by Pamela Talese (you can see it on her collection of signs).

The feeling of nostalgia was overwhelming. I was instantly sent back to a conversation I had with my high school friends about the sign and its motto.

Luckily, she sells archival quality, Giclée prints of the nighttime one. I bought one and put it right over my monitor so I can see it when I work.

From Art & Fear [amazon affiliate link], I learned to use my personal imperfect work as a jumping off point to a new work. This painting, which shows a company striving for perfection, but coming up short with an imperfect sign, reminds me to keep trying.

It’s one example of Environment Hacking, and what I wrote about a few days ago in Use Motivation To Program Your Environment.

22nd Blogaversary

I started this blog on December 23, 2003. I was about to quit my job and my plan was to do some consulting.

The first post I wrote was an Automated Software Process Checklist. My plan was to help people automate engineering processes. At the time, daily builds with automated tests and deployment was not common, but I had been doing it for a few years at Droplets (inspired by eXtreme Programming Explained [affiliate] and similar books).

I posted fairly regularly for a few months, but then got a new full-time job. There were ebbs and flow over the next 17 years or so. I posted more when I was consulting/job hunting because more people were checking it out. When I went independent full time in 2021, I started posting a lot more. Seventy percent of the posts on this site were written since then.

Over the last 22 years, this blog has helped me get work, find a publisher, get invited to conferences and podcasts, and it’s a resource for me to know myself better. It doesn’t make money directly, but it’s been a force multiplier for my career.

2026 4DX: Fourth Discipline

This is the fourth and final post in series of how I am implementing The 4 Disciplines of Execution [affiliate] for 2026 towards one goal each in my business, fitness, and personal life. I discussed the first [1st DX], second [2nd DX], and third [3rd DX] disciplines in previous posts.

Personal Growth: [1st DX] Get to CEFR level TBD in Spanish. [2nd DX] Focussed and repeat listening to beginner Spanish podcasts. [3rd DX] Count of podcast listens per week (at least 5 is my preliminary goal)

Business: [1st DX] Make Amazon Ads for my book break even. [2nd DX] Find readers, ask for reviews. [3rd DX] Review count per month (goal is 3 per month)

Fitness: [1st DX] Improve 5 lifts by TBD. [2nd DX] Lift 3x/week. [3rd DX] Pounds added to lifts.

The final discipline is accountability. For my business goal, I already am a member of a writer’s accountability group. For my personal growth goal, I want to get good enough to attend the local Spanish learning meetup by the middle of the year.

And finally, for fitness, I decided to rejoin Crossfit. I need access to barbells and racks (and small increment plates). It’s across the street from my apartment, and there’s a chance it could become a third space.

To add another layer, I will post monthly on this blog as well with just an update and my assessment of whether this plan is working or not.

Improving My Social Connection Index

I went to PINC, a single-track conference with over a dozen speakers covering the general theme of People, Ideas, Nature, and Community. This was their 11th year. The talks ranged from techniques to help teens manage social media, to cheese sculpting, to collecting data on homelessness, to disaster resilient housing (and more).

One talk stood out to me as being applicable to my life. Aaron Hurst talked about his plan to open up US Chambers of Connection around the country. I learned about his social connection index and the six points of connection. There were two points on that list that I need to work on: (1) a neighborhood contact (2) a third place.

When I first moved to Sarasota, my building had frequent events where I met many of my neighbors. But after COVID, they all moved out of the building. I have not focussed on meeting new neighbors, which I intend to change in 2026.

I would also say that I do not have a “Third Place” as defined by this index. I do belong to a couple of meetups and online communities. I am also a member of the local Toastmasters and Art Center. These types of communities are covered by other items in the six points of connection.

What I like about a Third Place is that it isn’t as tied to people or time, but more to the place itself (where you might find new people with a common interest). The idea is that you could pop in at any time for serendipitous connection. The classic examples are a church or senior center, but those aren’t right for me.

I have been considering rejoining Crossfit for access to barbells, but I might also meet other like-minded people. It’s possible that this helps me find accountability as well.

How Digital Journaling is Better Than Paper

Yesterday, I wrote about How Digital Journaling Is Worse Than Paper, and today I want to write about how it was better.

I use the Supernote Manta. It’s better than paper for me in these ways:

  1. It’s a lot easier to carry (slim and light). This will be especially true as I build up annual journals in it.
  2. It also has my Kindle, so I don’t need to carry that in addition.
  3. I never run out of ink.
  4. I can make my pen have various thicknesses and shades.
  5. You can undo and edit.

#5 is the reason I can’t give up digital journaling. This was not part of my criteria when I was deciding on this a year ago, but I could not live without it now.

Also, I don’t use this feature, but it has OCR, which makes the journals searchable. I do like that I could use it later.

2026 4DX: Third Discipline

This is the third post in series of how I am implementing The 4 Disciplines of Execution [affiliate] for 2026 towards one goal each in my business, fitness, and personal life. I discussed the first [1st DX] and second [2nd DX] disciplines in previous posts.

  • Business: [1st DX] Make Amazon Ads for my book break even. [2nd DX] Find readers, ask for reviews.
  • Fitness: [1st DX] Improve 5 lifts by TBD. [2nd DX] Lift 3x/week.
  • Personal Growth: [1st DX] Get to CEFR level TBD in Spanish. [2nd DX] Focussed and repeat listening to beginner Spanish podcasts.

In the third discipline, we design scoreboards to tell us if we are winning. The idea here to make it impossible to not know where the leading indicators are. The ideal is like a sports scoreboard—easy to glance and focussed on the one thing we are trying to do (score points).

My leading indicators for my business goal are the count of known readers and a count of known reviewers. Behind that I will have the list of names, but the scoreboard should just show the count. I will also make a goal that I can track against.

I already have the scoreboard for my fitness goal, which is just a spreadsheet tracking my lifts. I only need to track my last rep count and weight.

For the Spanish goal, I need to pick some number of repetitions that I think it will take to be able to listen to a podcast with full comprehension. I will have to just try over the next couple of weeks. Once I have that, I just need to track that number each week.

The fourth discipline is to build in some accountability. This is easier for the book’s intended use, which is for teams. The 4th DX is just to have a dedicated meeting where they make sure that the leading indicators are moving and that they seem to be resulting in the WIG. I will need some time to think about this, so I’ll probably take a detour in future posts and get back to it in a week.

2026 4DX: Second Discipline

Yesterday, I wrote about the first discipline from The 4 Disciplines of Execution [affiliate]. In that post I set up three ideas for Wildly Important Goals for 2026.

By the end of the year:

  • Business: Get my book to a stage where Amazon ads are break-even.
  • Fitness: Improve 5 lifts by X pounds (TBD), while maintaining my body weight.
  • Personal: Get to CEFR level (TBD) in Spanish.

All of these goals are easy to assess, but they aren’t a plan. In the 2nd discipline we try to define a leading indicator that we can work on at any time.

To accomplish my business goal, I need to improve my Amazon listing and find the right price such that it’s breaks even with the ad cost. To start, I will need to do a small ad spend just to see what my conversion rate is.

The easiest way to improve my listing is to get more reviews (aside: if you bought my book, please review it on Amazon). The best way to get a review is to ask readers directly, and to do that, I need to know who my readers are. So, the action I need to do is to write personal emails or LinkedIn DMs to people that have told me they bought the book and ask them to review the book. I will also use all my other marketing channels (e.g. this blog, my mailing list, Linked In, networking) to try to find my readers.

My fitness goal is just to follow Radically Simple Strength [affiliate]. I am doing the beginner plan and I have some time before this stops working. The leading indicator is my current max weight for 5 reps at a lift. I am doing the 3x/week plan, which cycles through the lifts. I should also make a nutrition plan to go along with this, but generally I have tried to eat cleaner and enough to support muscle growth.

For my personal goal, I need to just spend more time studying. I do DuoLingo, Fluent Forever, Mango, and my own Anki deck at various frequencies. But, I think that the main thing I could do to improve immediately is to listen to long-form beginner Spanish audio (like Dreaming Spanish) more seriously. I think my leading indicator would be to listen to one of these several times per week (the same one), at first with a transcript, and then over and over. The first few listens need to be focussed and undistracted (getting 100% comprehension), but later listens could be on walks, during errands, while lifting, etc.

Tomorrow, I will use these leading indicators in the 3rd discipline, which is to build a compelling scoreboard that tells you if you’re winning.