Thursday, October 10, 2002

Fixin' the bugs in life (a resolution) Tue, Dec 25, 2001; by Daniel Berlinger. I love cleaning house. No, that's not it. I love the end result of cleaning house. That's it. And not the niggling little dusting that folks do once a week. I mean the serious, throw out the junk, re-arrange, improve the way it works kind of heavy duty cleaning. Getting that stuff done gives me a very positive feeling. There is a certain psychic weight that is removed. Objects have more than physical weight and getting them squared away, shipshape, so to speak, lightens the burden. It feels natural to me that things feel lighter, these objects are now helping me instead getting in the way. (Eliminating stuff is also good. If you aren't happy with what you have, why think that more things is going to improve anything? But I digress.) Years ago, when hard drive space was precious, I can remember the feeling of wide open space a new 200 megabyte drive would posess. Of course, there was all that new space in which to store files and apps... but why did it give me that "wind swept plains" feeling? It seemed out of proportion, even back then. Not long ago I realized that when things get cluttered; when you fight to keep everything in its place; when life becomes one of those puzzles with one space left blank, and you have to shuffle everything to get things into the right order; when you have more stuff than you can store -- that the objects themselves fight you and add their own "drag" to your life. Even on the micro level of hard drive space. And life can be full of such things. Bugs is what they are. LifeBugs. All those seemingly small things that don't really work the way they should, or that require massive rearrangement in order to be useful? Dems is LifeBugs, sure'nuff. If you're anything like me (and on this topic, apparently, many folks are) digging into those bugs gets put off for a long time. You just keep powering through, and arranging and arranging and arranging again, never getting to the root of the matter and fixing the bug. On a friend's site talking about a recently fixed life bug: "Why I put up with this for so long is completely beyond me." And that states the problem in a nutshell. We all "put up" with stuff. And it has a cost. It takes energy to power through these problems. (I didn't link to the site because I'm not sure the site's owner wants to be the poster boy for LifeBugs.) This past year I spent a lot of time working on various software related business processes, reading Joel's stuff, using FogBugz, thinking and applying Mark's material, knowledge 'blogging, writing software, running a team of about 30 or so folks. I've studied chaos and complexity, peopleware and deadlines, pattern languages and how buildings learn... I've written a few hundred pages of documentation, and few hundred more web pages and 'blog entries. And what it all boils down to at the moment is "Life is full of bugs." I find that that capturing the problem is more than half the battle. I need to step back and note "This did not go the way I desired." And having noted that, a bit of detail on what went wrong is all that is initially required. James Clark said "standards, which are often of great benefit in areas that are well explored, have the potential to stifle innovation in areas where the subject matter is not well understood and is still developing." Nicely put I think. I don't want to try "engineer" the joy out of my life. I don't want standards (constraints) everywhere. But I want to record that things haven't gone well and note why, to improve the situation as soonas possible. Tincture of time needs to be applied, a bit of removal and distance, especially since a lot of how I work is serious immersion followed by intense fun, which leaves little desire for fixing LifeBugs. (This by itself is bug and needs fixin', but that's another story.) For little things, no formal record is desired. A simple "I'll do that this way next time" is all that I need. For more complex or chaotic events, I'm believe that a bit more formality will simplify and possibly energize the correction. If nothing else, at least there'll be a nice "to do" list -- always a good facilitator. Lately, I've been digging into a bunch of life bugs that I've wanted to fix, but couldn't muster the energy to do so while I involved in very long work days. The positive energy that flows from clicking the bugs off the list reminds me (again) that I should work on the bugs more often. Fixing bugs sooner, rather than later, saves the energy needed to power through them. If they're well understood they're easier to fix because the source of the problem is fresh in my mind. As I said above, I used Joel's FogBugz to help me wrap my hands around some projects. This year I'm hoping for a few new features in FogBugz that will allow me to apply it to my freshly minted "LifeBugz" resolution. I need a couple of features, one of them being control over who can see what. I want to be brutally honest with my LifeBugs, and in order for me to do so, I need to know that no one can casually peek at the list. I'm not that strong. I'd also like to be brutally honest with assesments that may include others. No need to hurt feelings with my off the cuff, heat of the moment, comments not *intended to be seen* by anyone other than myself. Some control over this would make me much more comfortable. The other thing I'd like is for other people to easily add a task to the list. The list isn't necessarily limited to things that are broken, they can be things that need doing as well. Why shouldn't my family be able to post tasks? The folks I worked with could because we shared the project space, why not the kinfolk for the "family projects?" It would be a great way to handle certain organizational issues. I might be dreaming about getting my family involved, but you never know. Maybe the LifeBugs Way will become viral? Anyway, that's the plan for the new year. Unflinching, tireless, relentless, newly organized Life Bug fixing. 6:41:53 PM    trackback []     Articulate []

Bugs, bugs, Bugz. Bugs, bugs, Bugz. "If you aren't already using a bug/feature database, and if you'd like to improve your customer service, project tracking, efficiency and more—purchase FogBugz." [It's the best of these packages that I've used. Simple, to the point and easy to use alongside of K-Log or work 'blog. v.3 is shipping in a couple of weeks. (Disclosure: The link above is an affiliate link. I'll make a few pennies if you use that link or the ones in the full article. However, I've been recommending FogBugz since long before they had an affiliate program.)] [Archipelago] 4:29:19 PM    trackback []     Articulate []