Dave R. Brooks 🚢

Interested in Productive Journaling and Free-writing? Over the next 30 days, I'll be writing 30 Atomic Essays. Follow my Social Blog on @typeshare_co typeshare.co/daverbrooks

40 years in software, now building for retirement... After 40+ years of software development, I’m nearing retirement and looking for a way to give back. I decided to build a free portfolio rebalancing tool. #FIRE #buildinpublic #retirement

Tigers are solitary animals, they love huge personal space. Lions are clingy and social animals.

@damn_ethan So True! One thing that jumps out at me: The tasks cycle through passive, active, and physical activities. 1. Production (Creativity). 2. Absorption (Learning). 3. Exercise (Physical). 4. Rest (Mandatory). Discovering your rhythm is a key part of leveraging this formula.

Something that's been on my mind for a while... Whenever I read old biographies I'm shocked by how much mental endurance normal people had for work each day. Here's the learning schedule Thomas Jefferson laid out for his daughter: 8-10AM: Practice Music 10-1PM: Dance one day, draw the other 1-2PM: Draw the day you dance, write a letter the next 3-4PM: Read French 4-5PM: Exercise in Music 5 Till Bed: Read English, Write, etc. Today, it's common to hear that you have up to 4 good hours of creative energy. A lot of writers agree on that. Business people too. So a lot of our modern advice revolves around protecting that 4 hours – avoiding distractions, prioritizing, using technology to do more in less time. But more and more, I think this is wrong. I think this ability to do good work is more like a muscle, and we just have less reason to develop it than before. The same way humans can technically run down gazelles, but we don't anymore. When it comes to getting good work done, I think there are three main factors: 1. How much time you have available to work 2. How fast you can do the work you need to do 3. Mental Endurance: How long you can continue working well What's interesting is that you can control all of those, but not to the same degree. Time available to work, for example. Yes, you can influence this by keeping your calendar clear of distractions. But there's a hard limit. You can never go above 24 hours a day. And obviously, less, most days. Speed can also be modified, either by getting better at your craft, or by using technology. Variations in speed between two people can be way different than variations in time available to work. For example, writing a book with pen and paper is orders of magnitude slower than doing it with ChatGPT. But the value of that exercise, and the product that comes from it are vastly different too. Not everything is worth doing faster. So these things can be controlled, but not to the same degree, and they're not equally worth optimizing. So here's the order I think I would try to improve them, in order to lead a good life and also do very good work. First, mental endurance. This is the actual rate limiter on what you can get done. All other things being equal, one person who can do good work six hours a day will dramatically outpace a peer who can only do four good hours a day. Mathematically, the person who can only do four hours of good work can technically match the person who works six, if they're 50% faster. But my guess is that, in the real world, they'd still lose. Mental endurance comes with other traits that are harder to quantify, but clear when you look at the careers of people who have it. So endurance first. Then, speed. The force multiplier on your productive time. Finally, I'd focus on how much time is devoted to work each day. The reason this is last is that... 1. Of the three, it's got least variability, and 2. I think you probably just need to be busy to be happy. So optimizing time spent around work is less important than making sure that time is spent well. Anyways, that's my evolving take on how to do good work. The one I'm most interested in is that first one, mental endurance. It seems like it's degraded a lot in the modern world. But my guess is that it's actually still there. We probably just need to stay the fuck off anything connected to the internet. The context-switching is probably what tires us out, more than the total time spent working.

Your entire life will change the moment you... (thread)

Writing Every Day For 30 Days has Taught Me This Lesson About Doing Hard Thing Successfully.

3 Realizations Software Developers Must Embrace Before Starting A Solopreneur SAS Business

1 Important Lesson Software Developers Should Be Aware Of Before Starting A Solopreneur Business

Software Developers Who Embrace This 1 Concept Achieve A Faster And Happier Success

Developers Should Start Every Software Project With These 3 Steps To Iterate Quickly And Easily Pick Up Where You Left Off.

@TimStodz I like to think of it as 1% something. Small changes no matter the direction are valuable. It provides feedback. No change, no feedback, no feedback, no next action.

"Get 1% better every day." Good perspective, but flawed. It's more like: - Get 0.1% better - Get 0.1% better - Get 0.1% worse - Get no results at all - Get 0.1% better Don't expect growth to be linear. Get ready for and up and down grind.

I started out in the red, now I'm blue!

@karthik_viswa This is good Karthik Thanks, I'd like to see a post with more details on serverless concepts. I find it to be confusing at best.

Serverless Computing: What are Containers and What Is Their Purpose? Day 25 of #ship30for30

@joyfulsurprise Subdomain Trickery ** is a tough one for sure!

How to Spot Seven Ways Hackers Trick You Into Clicking on Fake URLS

3 Reasons Indi-Hackers Should Leverage Building In Public To Start A Meaningful Dialogue With Early Adopters And Reach A Target Audience

@karthik_viswa Bounce back from a setback I like it!

3 Reasons Why I missed Day 23 of Ship 30 for 30 Day 24 of #ship30for30

New Software Developers, Avoid 1 Mistake I Made To Increase Your Job Potential And Build An Organic Demand For Your Services

@SuperpowerQueen Especially when you make room for the things "or people" you love!

Superpower Short-Cut: When in doubt, do something - anything - that inspires you. Even if it's having a day off! Our lives are so filled with tasks, we don't have room for our Superpowers. You'll find your Superpower quickly when you're making room for things you love.

"The gap between knowing what you want and going after it is where fear thrives. You don’t need enough courage for the entire journey. You only need courage for the next step." A tiny thought in the @farnamstreet newsletter fs.blog/brain-food/aug…

3 Indicators Proving Ship 30 Is Reinforcing The Habit Forming Steps I Need To Build A Strong Software Engineering Twitter Following So I Can Interact With Like-minded Developers

@Nicolascole77 I heard Tim Ferriss call this... "Just in time reading vs. Just in case."

Content consumption when you already know what to work on and why is a waste of time.