January 15, 2025

Greg Thomas

Where Does this Go?

When starting a new job you want to be able to ask the question “Where does this go?” and be able to get back a clear, clean, and descript answer. You don’t want pontifications, talks about technology, or platform idioms that talk about where something goes but doesn’t go. Taken in a different vein, imagine you are helping someone move into their brand new house and you’re standing in the front foyer holding a box. The first question you will ask is “Where do you want this?” They will think for a few seconds and then give you a room

January 14, 2025

Greg Thomas

Weather Changes

Changes in weather, significant changes, can drastically affect the course of your day. A little rain here, some sunshine there, a bit of snow – they are all okay in proportion to what you are currently working through. But a 50cm dump you had no idea was coming your way? Plus 45C heat? That is significant, that changes things, that throws all your plans out the window, and forces you to create and find new ones. We all know the weather can change our plans because it’s “there” and we all know about it. What’s the weather in your organization

You’re Gonna Lose… Sometimes

Guaranteed, you will lose. Sometimes it will be a close loss (almost finished to the demo and then a pesky little pixel disrupted the whole thing). Sometimes it will be an epic shutdown on the launch pad that will pull down everything. Other times it might be trying to push things a bit too far and you destroy it all. It’s all a loss – it doesn’t matter whether it’s close or far away – it’s a loss. You won’t always lose, but you will lose. Now, is it worth it to complain about how much you lost by or

January 12, 2025

Greg Thomas

Your Place of Work

Your Place of work is anywhere you want it to be. Go to an office. Go to your desk. Go to a coffee shop. But make it useful, make it productive, make it valuable. If you’re not getting anything, it’s no longer your place of work. It’s just a place, but it needs to be a place where you get things done.

January 11, 2025

Greg Thomas

The Detractors

Detractors will never go away. I was surprised to see I wrote about this previously, many years ago. They aren’t there to help, they don’t volunteer, they don’t step in. They whittle at your efforts, they try to hold you back, and their job is to pull them down. With Detractors, it will always be the same – you can’t stop them, you can’t hold them back, you can’t engineer some way for them not to be there. You can only work through them and let them watch from the sidelines. And hope they join in.