Espresso Shots 2-8-26

It's that time again for my weekly update, which includes a short collection of noteworthy finds, posts that inspire, as well as a few reflections from the past week or two. I'll aim to land these in your inbox by the weekend, in time to pair with your morning coffee (or your preferred cup of inspiration).

The Latest Drippings ☕️

• The Last Lecture. I was reminded this week of The Last Lecture: Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams, a talk by professor Randy Pausch, who passed from cancer in 2007; his lecture was about living life to the fullest. For the last several months, I've been talking more and more with my friends about how to find fulfillment in the day, so it felt really applicable to pop this one back to the top of the reading stack. You can grab the book here, and if you've never watched it, here's the video of the lecture.
• Getting the Main Thing Right. While this post has a slant towards the tradeoffs one makes in software engineering, I thought the theme was a really valuable one for anyone to think about upon any endeavor: 'if you get the main thing right, you can get away with a lot of mistakes.' The lesson in here is that 'you should spend a lot of time and effort trying to figure out what to focus on. In the extreme case, even spending half of your time doing this is worthwhile if it puts you on the right track and you'd otherwise be neglecting the main thing.' And, while you may feel 'safer and more productive to be doing something. But if you can force yourself to focus on the meta-question of what you ought to be doing - even if you don't like the answer - you'll be in a better position to achieve your goals.' Side note, good to take note of the Pareto Principle.
• In Praise of Guessing. Boy, when I tell folks to 'guess' or be fluid on a thing, do I get some interesting responses. 'The word guess makes people deeply uncomfortable. We've been trained to believe that business is about certainty, about knowing things about data-driven decisions. But early in any endeavor — whether setting OKRs for a new initiative or estimating how long a feature will take to build—you don't have data. You have hunches. You have analogies. You have experience with vaguely similar situations.' Sometimes it's ok to trust your gut, and this post also points out why you can't punish those guesses.
• We Don't Remember What We Think, Only What We Do. 'Ideas don't work as long as they remain ideas. If I act on an idea a few times and it pays off, there's a good chance it will become a part of how I live. If I only read it and tape it to the wall, hoping to remember and act that way when it counts, it's unlikely it will ever make it out of idea form.' A good reminder to shift from thinking about doing things to actually doing them. Actions over words.
• Look for What's True. I received some critical feedback from a close co-worker this week, that I should take more care to listen actively, instead of waiting to talk next. And, like any feedback, it can sting at first, but if you spend some time to 'look for what's true', it's a great point. 'Instead of focusing on what's wrong with the feedback, ask yourself what's right. Sure, your critic is totally off base, but is there a kernel of truth there?' More to think about here.
• I'm Addicted to Being Useful. This post ties into a core idea that was swimming around my head when I shitcanned most of my PKM hoarding: an addiction to being useful. 'It's hard for me to see a problem and not solve it. This is especially true if I’m the only person (or one of a very few people) who could solve it, or if somebody is asking for my help. I feel an almost physical discomfort about it, and a corresponding relief and satisfaction when I do go and solve the problem. The work of a software engineer - or at least my work as a staff software engineer - is perfectly tailored to this tendency. Every day people rely on me to solve a series of technical problems. In other words, I don’t mind the ways in which my job is dysfunctional, because it matches the ways in which I myself am dysfunctional.' I never really thought about the shadows that are driving a lot of my ways of working or behaviors until recently.
• Burnout Is Breaking a Sacred Pact. 'I am a connoisseur of burnout', this post starts, (and what a hook!) and not only looks at burnout but also at some things you can do to actively notice when it's starting and how to recover from it. 'Burnout, by contrast, is like a tendon tear: It doesn't heal on its own, and it only leaves you weaker.'
• In the Age of AI, Better Meetings Might Be Your Company's Secret Weapon. Just picked up the newly published Your Best Meeting Ever from Rebecca Hinds. As someone who sits in far too many meetings (26 last week!), I'd love to explore some of the techniques in her book as I try to regain some of that madness. Her solution is to 'treat meetings as the most important, most expensive, and most overlooked products in your entire organization.’ The first task - an Armeetingeddon - a complete calendar purge, and only add back the important ones.
• I Hate Fish. A fun read on personal productivity systems. 'Productivity system maintenance is a fact of life, but when the act of maintenance becomes an onerous task unto itself, I get productivity rage. I either passive-aggressively slowly stop doing the work over time or I rage quit the whole damned application, grab the nearest Post-It note, and start over.'
• Claude Is a Space to Think. Gratuitous AI post of the week: What Anthropic has been releasing lately with Claude Code has had me rethinking so many things around my views on software development. I do not subscribe to a model in which engineers go away, but rather, transform what we are doing into a 'third golden age' of engineering (great talk from Grady Booch). 'AI coding tools represent another rise in abstraction, not the end of engineering. Just as we moved from assembly to Fortran to object-oriented programming, AI assistants are akin to what was happening with compilers in those days - Fear not, developers. Your tools are changing, but your problems are not.'
• Revisiting The 500 Mile Email. I love that this one resurfaces every few years. If you don't know the story, 'the university system administrator received a call from the Statistics Department claiming they couldn't send an email beyond about 500 miles. If you know anything at all about how email works, your reaction would be the same as Harris: Yeah, right.' Turns out, it was true: 'Email to a site closer than 500 miles worked fine. Those two sites further away than a little over 500 miles invariably failed'. The takeaway is always the same: 'Sometimes you need to look under the layer where the problems seem to exist to discover what's actually going on.' (and check out the original post to the humorous reason why).
• The Return Of The Local Newspaper. I've said it previously, but the printed newsletter has become something I've been investing more and more in. In this post, David explores the importance of 'independent, decentralized media outlets that prioritize civic duty, ethical journalism, and honest reporting.'
• Charisma Is Bullshit. I love the 'everything is bullshit' blog; there's always a raw and honest look at everything there. In this latest post, he examines charisma. 'Charismatic people lie on one end of a continuum, and on the other end of the continuum are the people who suck at social paradoxes. You know, the people who are cringe, pretentious, awkward, thirsty, or fake. The people who desperately care what you think and eagerly seek your praise and attention. The weirdos who share unpopular opinions that are truly unpopular. The thirst trappers who try to be sexy but come off as slutty or insecure. These cringey people seem like the opposite of authentic and cool.' But there's a super interesting correlation to social paradoxes that I was unaware of. Great read.
• The Nexus of Candy. Do you like Sees Candies? Enjoyed this narrative on the discovery and appreciation of various candies.
• Which State Eats The Most Hot Dogs?. File under 'today I learned', but West Virginia consumes the most hot dogs of any state, with an estimated 481 hot dogs eaten per person, per year. The question is - why?

Amor Fati ✌🏻