My uncle died suddenly this year. He was unbelievably caring - and not just to family - but to everyone he ever met. His funeral was jam packed with everyone from homeless people to executives of multi-billion dollar companies.
I always thought that his ability to always have you, and whatever you had last talked about with him, on his mind at any moment was some kind of supernatural gift. I was surprised to find out at his funeral that he actually kept an excel spreadsheet of everyone he met and what they needed and were going through. He reviewed this constantly.
It didn't lessen his genuine love for everyone, just let him be a little more super human.
This would be more accurately titled, "I survived 10 years as a solo developer and here are the choices I made". Here's my version:
1) Craftsmen pay good money for their tools. Invest in your office space, whether its a dedicated space in your home or a coworking membership. But be honest about what tools you need. You probably don't need a $1000 aeron chair. But you do need one that's comfortable. You probably don't need that super-cool triple-panel 17" laptop Razer pumped at CES for web development. You probably do need something with enough RAM to run a few VMs sometimes.
2) Outsource everything that doesn't make you money or that you aren't good at. Taxes and bookkeeping, for example. But know enough about it so you can tell if you've hired good help there.
3) Invest in yourself. Learn some new technology at least once a year—whether thats a framework, a language, or a skill like design. Go to at least one regional conference, and at least one national conference if you can afford it.
4) Work the shit out of your network. Set a limit on how many unpaid lunch meetings you'll take to hear about other people's problems, and always try to find a way to help them even if you don't wind up taking the job. And then try to hit your limit most of the time. Farm favors like they're a cash crop.
5) Find a way to keep yourself accountable, whether that's a mentor, a coach, or an accountability partner. We all need someone to keep us honest about our motivations and rationalizations from time to time.
6) Try to exercise some self control over how many self-indulgent HN comments you make in a given period of time. :)
The important thing to take away from that experience is that the detractors were all correct, as far as any extrapolation of then current technology into the future could take them.
I've experienced that cycle several times where I thought "oh this will be big in 10-20 years" and had people say "No, reason x, y, and z all mean it won't happen." and then some discovery or change in the situation made x, y, and z irrelevant.
As a result I've trained my self to look at it "in reverse" as it were, which is to say "currently x, y, and z makes it impossible, what would have to change to make x, y, and z irrelevant?" and then look for changes in the margins. Things like "making oil from corn" is impractical when oil is $35 a barrel but quite reasonable when oil is $150 a barrel. Or 'cracking hydrogen and oxygen' with electrolysis takes more energy than you get back, so how can you exploit 'wasted' energy like sunlight to help it along? etc.
The important thing is to avoid trapping yourself into believing nothing will change that isn't already known. People I've met seem to do this all the time.
The key thing is to realise that YOU control your thoughts. We're creatures of habits. YOU choose what to think whether you realise it or not.
Something within you associates the feeling of "depression" with reward.
Actively review your history, your relationships, patterns of behaviour. Look at your own thought processes critically, document them, decide how you want to think instead, and force yourself to think in the new way.
You control not just what you think but how you feel. You can feel how you want to feel. That's the key. Once you decide or are told you're "depressed" you "accept" that you have an "illness" and internalise it. Stop doing that shit. Ignore those bastards. Change how you think.
This is basically CBT. You have to actively control your thought processes to change them to something you want. Once you've done that for a while it becomes the new default.
Don't allow yourself to think things that don't help you. When you start fantasising about death, don't let yourself think about it. Force yourself to make plans for the next few days or something instead. When you think "I don't have the energy/motivation to make plans because I'm 'depressed'", tell yourself, "I'm not allowed to think that, instead I'm going to MAKE THE FUCKING PLANS".
Fuck all that bullshit about "chemical imbalances". You know what that means? It means your brain is wired wrong. Those chemicals? The sames ones everyone else has. Wanna know what the imbalance is? YOU LEARNED TO BEHAVE IN THE WRONG WAY, SO YOUR WIRING IS ALL FUCKED UP. Those neurotransmitters are going exactly where they've learnt to go.
YOU have to retrain your brain. Fuck everything people have told you about being "mentally ill". Recognise your brain as a learning machine and TEACH THAT MOTHER FUCKER HOW TO BEHAVE.
Life sucks? You either learn how to change it or learn how to change what you think about it.
You think those poor mother fuckers in third world countries with just enough food to eat who save up for years to buy a BICYCLE are depressed? FUCK NO THAT MOTHER FUCKER GOT HIS BICYCLE. He's 40 years old, barely feeding his family, but he's got a smile so wide he lights up every mother fucking heart in his village.
You know WHY? Because he doesn't think about why things are shit. He thinks about why things are SHIT HOT. MOTHER FUCKING BIKE HAS A BELL CHECK THAT SHIT OUT.
YOU define your reality. YOU define how you perceive the world. With a great deal of influence from those around you.
Surrounded by mother fuckers who are "depressed"? Get the fuck away from them. Find happy people. Catch their disease instead.
Control your thoughts, control your environment, discipline your brain to only allow you to think things that help you. Fuck everything else.
That's how you cure depression. You control what you think by understanding why you think what you think right now and throwing away the bad shit and keeping the good shit.
Do yourself a favour. Next time you think "I should be dead". Think "lol brain you're not allowed to think that shit anymore", SMILE and write down some shit you're grateful for. Call your friends/family and chat about some good shit that went down in the past. Think about the people who have done good shit for you over the years, and how happy it makes you that those mother fuckers exist.
Think of the mother fucker who you're most grateful for. Why do you like them so much? How did they make you feel? GOOD. Now go make other people feel like that. Be happy. Make other people happy. Feed on their happiness.
"But I want to die". Shut the fuck up brain you're not allowed to think that. Hey brain, remember that fucking awesome ice cream we ate last week? Yeah that was some good shit. I should show someone that ice cream, they'll like that shit. Remember that kid we used to hang out with when we were kids? Wonder what he's doing with his life now. We laughed our fucking cocks off at such and such. What a good memory.
What's that brain, feels good? Yeah, yeah it does feel fucking good. That's why you're gonna think good shit from now on brain. BECAUSE IT FEELS GOOD.
Fuck. Think good stuff. Don't allow yourself to think bad stuff. Make it a habit. Eventually you stop thinking bad stuff.
Make plans. Make people happy. Feed on happiness. Think of good memories. No good memories? Go fucking make some. Then think about them.
Fuck depression. Ain't nobody got time for that.
Here have a hug. They're free. Pass it on. Have a smile too these fuckers are great. :-D
> the theme all comes down to a battle against yourself
Perhaps "control" and "battle" are the wrong model. Some broad, general suggestions based on what experts have said:
Respect yourself: If you are doing something over and over again despite not wanting to, there probably is a good reason for it, a legitimate healthy need, even if the expression of that need is unhealthy. Respect that need and its priority as legitimate and serious. Find a healthy, productive way to address it. It should be no surprise that the response is unhealthy: Imagine if someone else had a real need and your response was to ignore it and abuse them constantly for acting on it; how would that person behave?
Know yourself: Know your strengths and limits; don't put yourself in position to fail and then abuse yourself for failing. Again, imagine you were someone else's manager, you knew their limitations, and yet you kept putting them in position to fail and then abused them over the results. That would be a horrible failure of management, not of the employee.
Have compassion for yourself. Like every human ever to live, you also will live your whole life with serious flaws.
Nurture yourself: Work together (so to speak) for change. That's how real change happens; that's how good parents, good teachers and mentors, and good managers accomplish things. Fighting with people just entrenches the problem.
....
That feels a little too ... bullsh*tty to post - loose, imprecise ideas with little serious foundation included; my apologies. But I'm not sure how to tighten it up, don't have links at my fingertips, and posting it seems better than not.
"When you schedule things, you are forced to deal with the fact that there are only so many hours in a week. You’re forced to make choices rather than add something to a never ending to-do list that only becomes a source of anxiety."
Great observation. I get the feeling scheduling is something that MBAs are taught, where "time is the restriction". What about JIT scheduling? In my view, adding dates to every task is another BS and unnecessary task. Here's an alternative restriction, tasks per day. "Ivy Ledbetter Lee" (business productivity guru 100 years ago) had another approach. Spend 15min at end of day doing the following:
* specify six tasks you need to finish
* prioritise them one to six
* do each task, in order, till finished
* work your arse off
* left-over tasks are added to tomorrows list
* repeat
The restriction here is how many tasks I NEED to do TODAY. Read more about "Ivy Ledbetter Lee" below.
I always thought that his ability to always have you, and whatever you had last talked about with him, on his mind at any moment was some kind of supernatural gift. I was surprised to find out at his funeral that he actually kept an excel spreadsheet of everyone he met and what they needed and were going through. He reviewed this constantly.
It didn't lessen his genuine love for everyone, just let him be a little more super human.