Lads, I've been having a think. How much do you plan your life? As in:-
• "I want to live in a nice house in that lovely village I always pass through. Here's how I'm going to achieve it."
• "The ultimate aim in my career is to be doing x.
• "I want to retire by the time I'm 60. I'm going to put away x amount of money every month to try and achieve this."
• "By the time I'm 40 I'd like to have traveled to the Azores, Japan, New Zealand and the Galapagos islands."
• "I want to learn a new language in the next two years."
• "This summer I'm going to walk the Three Peaks, go white water rafting and start training for my first 10k."
You get the idea. I have a milestone birthday later this month and, whilst my life isn't without direction, I could probably do with some more concrete end goals and how these are to be achieved.
> As for the lad claiming he can code a half a billion dollar website whilst hungover, maintained and developed by a near 6 billion dollar company, I refer you back to my good old LA Noire days.
Develop and maintain are totally different but with AWS and some funding yeah it's scalable enough to probably Just Work. You can shove your shitty 4chan memes up your crusty ringpiece you overhyped pinboard software using ponce, as some of the most successful products to ever market in certain segments have been nothing but a Linux server with a bunch of perl and regex on it.
To quote a colleague of mine during a conversation with the staff at a booth near ours at a trade show one year: "I think your product is amazing. Amazing that you think anyone would pay for this heap of junk that I could code while taking a shit".
>>418695 You seem a tad upset that some people find something useful to organise their life and all you've done is have a teary, I'd have thought if these things were so easy you'd just be on your way to spending a weekend coding a multi-million pound idea instead of crying on britfa.gs.
There's at least two lads on here who's actual job is to code multi million dollar websites, to be frank with you.
I really don't care either way about Trello but you seem weirdly defensive of it. I think you'd be happier in life if you could enjoy things without the direct approval of others. I'm not trying to have a go here, it's just something to think about.
I also work in the industry, but to be fair a common theme is code-lads acting really supercilious for no real reason.
I mean, I could get a bit wanky about the value of my projects too but I don't think it changes the fact that the lad can't in fact code these websites in a weekend that are so easy to do otherwise he'd probably have done it by now and be sitting on a yacht in the Caribbean not fighting on here. It's also like a basic bitch version of JIRA, but I'm probably going to hear how that's useless too now.
For the record, I said I don't really care whether you lads use it or not - but it just seems silly to level such juvenile criticisms at a clearly popular and useful website and that's all I'm calling out.
>>418708 >I mean, I could get a bit wanky about the value of my projects too but I don't think it changes the fact that the lad can't in fact code these websites in a weekend that are so easy to do otherwise he'd probably have done it by now and be sitting on a yacht in the Caribbean not fighting on here. It's also like a basic bitch version of JIRA, but I'm probably going to hear how that's useless too now
It's strange, that. I went for a job interview for a financial advice firm in Leeds that dealt primarily with high net worth individuals. The admin head there was really up herself and seemed to be under the impression that the company's clients being important meant that she was important when she was probably on about £25k.
> I mean, I could get a bit wanky about the value of my projects too but I don't think it changes the fact that the lad can't in fact code these websites in a weekend that are so easy to do otherwise he'd probably have done it by now and be sitting on a yacht in the Caribbean not fighting on here.
Sorry for the late reply but the satphone signal to my Yacht is slow as fuck these days.
Nah, in reality most web oriented code bases as gut-wrenchingly desperately simple - the trick, or the luck, is in having an idea and running with it at a time and with the right marketing campaign that work together just so.
I mean do you really think twitter is a sophisticated platform? Instagram? Even early Facebook versions were depressingly simple. They're all multi billion whatever platforms that most first year comp sci students could ape in their spare time.
Tl;dr - Being the second person to figure out how get golden eggs out of 10,000 lines of ruby/python/whatever floats your boat doesn't get you the golden egg. It does, however, save you $120 a year if that's your thing.
>>418713 >Tl;dr - Being the second person to figure out how get golden eggs out of 10,000 lines of ruby/python/whatever floats your boat doesn't get you the golden egg. It does, however, save you $120 a year if that's your thing.
You would also need to develop your own cloud platform if you wanted to use it away from home, but luckily that's a cunt-off we've already had in another thread.
>>418717 > You would also need to develop your own cloud platform if you wanted to use it away from home
Unless you're talking about logging into it from someone else's computer (and I really hope not - this is 2018 lad, not 1998; I'm picky about whose computer I plug my USB thumbdrives into) I'd just run it on localhost on my laptop, you pillock. Why would I want my data in the cloud anyway?
Regardless, if you stretch your weekend out to a full week you could probably add a cross platform mobile app that does the exact same thing and caches your changes until you get home and sync with your home machine. No cloud and no internet connection needed.
> I honestly am lost. You're now backing this stuff up with reaction images from iruntheinternet.com
If you think a random image of a dog appearing to use a computer I found on this VM constitutes a backing up of "stuff" then yes, you are totally and utterly fucking lost.
> Can the mod please just delete all this crap and ban us all for derailing a perfectly good thread?
You're the one who needs banning for shitting up a perfectly good thread with this Cello junk or whatever the crapware's called. Now go and add "jump off a bridge" to your "actionable items" list for today or something, there's a good chap.
As I've got older I've learned to try to avoid long term plans because you never have control over all the variables and nothing ever really turns out quite like you want it to.
What I've found easier, and better for my overall mental health, are achievable short-term goals which deal with week to week and month to month progress.
When I was a kid my mother taught me that if I took care of the pennies then the pounds would take care of themselves, likewise if you take care of the weeks and months (e.g. I'm going to go to the gym four times a week, I'm going to study Spanish for six hours a week, I'm going to read a new book every month) then the years will take care of themselves in that you'll be making continuous positive progress towards your goals.
If you want to do something longer term like visit whatever countries by whatever year then start by sticking twenty quid a week or whatever into a savings account and over time you'll find yourself moving towards your goal. Who knows, by then maybe you'll hate the idea of travel and all you'll really want is a really flashy car and a sixteen year old girlfriend with daddy and cocaine issues; either way you'll have the money.
Don't worry about the future too much, and don't judge your own life progress by that of others. The person you are in ten years may be a very different person to who you are now, so setting long-term concrete goals for yourself is only ever going to be disappointing while small continuous progressive steps will allow you to be more flexible as you grow and mature as a person.
Good post, but here's a counterpoint: I don't believe that continuous steps and long term planning have to be mutually exclusive. What you say about disappointment is well taken -- I just think this is more of a failure to be adaptable, or maybe a failure in being overly attached to something too specific, than it is a failure in the idea of long-term planning itself.
I also find that having a long-term plan can give meaning to goals that may otherwise be absent. I totally agree that life takes us in unpredictable directions, but having a rough idea of the type of life you want and committing that to paper/screen, and then tying those into shorter and middle term goals, has been the best method for me.
>As I've got older I've learned to try to avoid long term plans because you never have control over all the variables and nothing ever really turns out quite like you want it to
Management science holds that there are basically three ways you can plan the future, in this case the future of a business. The first one is a quasi-chaotic, purely reactive approach, where you pretty much just act on a day to day basis. The second approach is a fixed, static one where you attempt to plan ahead in great detail for anything from one to five years. And then there is an approach that is favoured by many, which is called an incremental or evolutionary approach. Simply put, you have a general idea about where you want to be headed, but as circumstances change, you know to revise your plans and adapt to those new circumstances, all the while not losing sight of the original goals that you set for yourself. Only when circumstances really no longer allow you to reach your set goals do you abandon those goals for new ones.
Both the other approaches have a tendency to throw you off your game gravely if you are not careful. The reactive approach can mean that nothing you do has any kind of common thread, putting you a risk of not being prepared to cope with rare and unforeseen events. And the static approach means you will have no answers as to what to do when sudden or adverse events blow you too far off course compared to your original plans.
There is a lot of voodoo in management science, but I think all this is a way of thinking which can be applied to your own personal life quite effectively.
As I said, there is a lot of voodoo in management science. It's one of the easiest areas of economics where you can make shedloads of money writing books and offering seminars which at their core aren't all that much more than jazzed up common sense. Management science is only surpassed by marketing in that respect.
But to be fair, around 30 to 40 percent of it are hard facts that you can't do without in order to successfully run a business.
I don't really think it's a counterpoint, rather a complimentary point. I did briefly mention having longer term goals but taking smaller steps towards them because you never know when your longer term goals might suddenly change (whether by choice or not).
That said it was a good point worth making, it clarifies my lines of thinking better than I did myself and perhaps manages to make the point I was trying to make in a clearer and more succinct fashion than I was able to myself.
Just to annoy >>/shed/14684, I'm going to talk about the software industry.
Back in the 80s, the vast majority of software projects were planned up front from start to finish using the waterfall model. Product managers would work with the customer to develop a product requirements document, which would then be used to produce a design. That design would be implemented, verified and delivered. Everything cascaded down from that product requirements document, hence the name "waterfall".
Over time, software projects became increasingly complex and started to fail catastrophically. Sometimes the requirements were just flat wrong, because the customer and the project manager had failed to fully understand the problem they were trying to solve; a working piece of software was delivered, but it wasn't useful to the customer. Sometimes the design was so absurdly complex that it was impossible to implement and the project dragged on until the customer decided to cut their losses and abandon it. Sometimes the software worked, but it was far too difficult to use or didn't integrate into the workflow of the users or the wider software infrastructure of the company. Months or years of work often amounted to nought.
We started to borrow ideas from just-in-time and lean manufacturing, which evolved into what we call the agile methodology. Rather than trying to plan everything up front, the development team build a simple, minimal prototype that solves one narrow part of the customer's problem. That prototype is tested with the end users, with their feedback being used to guide the next stage of development. If that prototype turns out to be completely useless, it can be abandoned at minimal cost; if it's useful but flawed, the design can be quickly amended based on user feedback before it becomes too complex.
Today, the vast majority of successful software projects use some form of the agile methodology. Public sector software projects tend to stick with waterfall methods, which is why they tend to fail so often and so expensively. Doing "just the right amount" of planning had a revolutionary impact on the software industry.
Another approach that seems to be prevalent in software programming is to just haphazardly and without great planning start in one place, then put that area on hold suddenly if you run into a problem, and start another detail of the project, then you go back to the last unfinished bit of the project and think, what if we implement this and that feature as well, and so on, and you get totally lost and lose sight of the project as a whole.
I remember reading some programmer's blog where he likened that approach to building a house, and then one day deciding you want to build the roof first, then maybe you spend some time in the basement and decide you want gold plated faucets in the boiler room, then you go back to tiling the roof, and then maybe at some point you put a few bricks on top of each other which you think will one day be part of the downstairs livingroom. And so on.
I dabble in Arduino programming from time to time, and I have started projects with many different facets that needed many different functions, so I can relate to that kind of temptation of falling into a kind of ADHD approach where you do one thing one day and then in the middle of it decide that another segment of your code could use that one cool feature you found somewhere. It doesn't help advance your project, so I have decided that in the future, I will make a more stringent outline of what I want my code to do. This is just a hobby for me, I don't do it to earn any money, so I guess it doesn't matter. But still. It's annoying when you realise you have spent ten days developing a bespoke font library for your little TFT screen, but have not made one bit of progress on your code's actual core routines.
So that's what 'agile' means. I've always thought it was a stupid corporate buzzword. I mean, it still is a bit of a stupid corporate buzzword, but at least I know it actually means something more like 'adaptable', now.
Going back to the original thread topic, I'd highly recommend reading Angela Duckworth's 'Grit' for anyone interested in developing interests and committing to them in a more consistent way. She has a section on goal setting, and uses the following simple diagram to illustrate how prerequisite goals can add up to some ultimate aim, and how you can easily work around it when one section of the plan fails.
There's lots of other interesting research and such in there, too.
It's recently dawned on me that 2019 will be the first year where I don't have some form of achievement to aim for; most of the past few years have been dominated by completing professional qualifications.
I could go on to attain Fellowship status if I really set my mind to it, but I've very little desire to go on and do this. It means I've got a fair amount of free time which was previously taken up by studying which could be allocated elsewhere and I was thinking:-
- Learning a new language. I'm only fluent in English and I was thinking of either learning German, I vaguely remember the basics from school, or one of the Scandinavian languages.
- Writing a book. Even if it turns out to be a glorious failure I'd like to have tried writing a book at some point in my life. I have the feeling that I'd be best suited to children's literature. I'm sure there are challenges out there where you have to write so many words in a day.
- Getting in better shape. I have some neglected weights in my bedroom and there is a local parkrun I was considering joining, even if it'll make me look like one of those 'new year, new me' idiots.
If any of you lads have any advice in respect of the above then it'd be greatly appreciated.
Since this thread appeared again I might as well make a blog post.
A year and a half ago a job opportunity fell through and in terms personal development, fell off a cliff. I'm starting a job in January which will finally allow me to start trying to achieve my dream/s.
I've got a plan and a step by step list of things to do which will take quite a few years but I'm happy I'll finally have a shot at it. I still feel pretty shitty effectively wasting 1 and a half years of my life trying to get back on my feet with no personal development though.
>I still feel pretty shitty effectively wasting 1 and a half years of my life trying to get back on my feet with no personal development though.
I'm a believer in the idea that time is never wasted. You may think that nothing much has happened in the last one and a half years, but evidently you did gain some insights into life itself, if just the fact that time is so easily pissed up the wall and that you need to fill your time with more meaningful things again from here on out. Maybe you just needed those one and a half years for yourself to figure out what you really want out of life.
I used to plan a lot, but something would always happen. I tried to make my goals more realistic, even to be small things, but somehow something happens the vast majority of the time that shatters or changes those plans greatly. So I stopped planning.
So much has happened to me in the past 2 years from just travelling around and saying "yes" to a lot. I've gained opportunities I could never have planned. I can imagine in another 2 years I'll happen upon even more and come across things I never thought to do before.
Why plan long term when so much can change in the short term?
That's actually something that's been discussed in a few different ways earlier in the thread.
I personally find long-term planning essential to getting the big stuff done, even when (especially when) short-term changes happen.
I guess it really depends on the nature of the goal, but I've found most things I've wanted in life haven't come about in the spontaneous way you describe.
It can happen, sometimes. You'll meet the person you eventually marry at a shit bowling themed birthday party you were thinking of skipping, or you'll be headhunted for a job you'd have never thought to apply for but fit into perfectly, etc., but this strikes me as much more rare.
Planning is for the stuff in life that requires consistent and conscious effort, things like getting fit or earning a PhD or finding meaningful work.
You're totally right that there's a hell of a lot you can get done by just actively participating in the world. But maybe planning is a process of exclusion, as well -- to decide you want a certain kind of future means deciding against others.
>>423224 As someone who wasted a year before getting my current job I can empathise. Still, you've gotten yourself back into the system now which is a much bigger deal than you might think and now have that base to work on your goals. I Hope the new job goes well anyway.
Not really.
I do wish for some things and I do put some effort into it [0] but I can't control the whole process. And it isn't like life hasn't shovelled shite in my face at times multiplying the major part of work by zero.
Too chaotic.
Also, that old 'beware of your desires for they shall come true' adage makes sense now.
>>418570 Definitely idiosyncratic but not like it doesn't make any sense.
For some reason you reminded me of Bucky Fuller.
>>418737 > Simply put, you have a general idea about where you want to be headed
Actually this is how I see it too.
>>423222 This year I've got the position I'd been aiming for. I'm coasting along now, thinking where I should jump next.
If you've got weights right in your room, go for it lad. They're just the best for getting into shape - always nearby and you don't have to drive/go anywhere.
[0] On a very tangential note, I'd like to have a fancy house somewhere near the town's centre and something like W124/W126/W210/W212 - I like the cars of that period - to drive but at my current place of residence that would cost an awful amount of money.
Has anyone here tried YNAB? It sounds interesting but I'm put off somewhat by the monthly fee and its functionality being aimed primarily at North Americans.
>>424525 I bought YNAB 4 on Steam, and I see it's no longer available. Back then it was just software you paid once for. I had no idea that it had switched to a subscription-based service. That's awful. You have to budget for your budgeting software?
Anyway, YNAB 4 worked fine for me. You don't even need the software, because YNAB is a method composed of simple rules:
1. Give Every Dollar a Job (i.e. categorise all your money each month, you don't have any 'spare' cash, and if you do, you put it in a specific 'spare' category)
2. Save for a Rainy Day (i.e. set up categories for any emergencies and allocate savings for them so you aren't taken by surprise when the worst happens)
3. Roll with the Punches (i.e. if you overspend in one category, no worries, next month just increase your budget for that category)
4. Live on Last Month's Income (i.e. if you can pay this month's bills with the money you made last month, you don't need to worry about money any more).
>>424526 They claim that you will save far more than the subscription cost. Its main selling points seem to be that it can integrate with US bank accounts to breakdown and analyse your spending and also it can be used to set and measure progress towards financial goals.
I've been spending a fair bit of time on r/UKPersonalFinance after seeing it mentioned on here a few time; the key things I've gleaned from it are get some form of budgeting software, change jobs every 3-5 years if your salary is falling below the market rate and to invest any money you can tie away into index trackers to benefit from compound growth.
Is it legal to just swim across the English Channel? I mean, just rock up on the beach and just decide to keep swimming. I wasn't sure if you needed to get a special permit for it to check you're not going to get the coastguard after you or you're not going to swim in the way of a ferry or arrested by French immigration services if you make it to the other side.
