Articles for category: Drive

December 13, 2024

Greg Thomas

Selling Overcomplexity

You can sell “overcomplexity”, “you wouldn’t understand” and “don’t worry about its” for a period of time. But as soon as someone asks “Why?” – the selling period is over because now you need to explain “why it’s so complex”, “why no one else would understand” and “why, in fact, everyone should understand what is happening. Selling overcomplexity only works until someone says – “we could do it this way.”

December 12, 2024

Greg Thomas

Start Chopping

Too much on your plate? Start chopping. Too much to get done? Start chopping. Too many thoughts running through your head? Start chopping. We’re past the whole “say no” to new things, you already said yes, so now your options are to keep going or to start chopping and moving on the tasks that matter to you and that you want to get done.

December 10, 2024

Greg Thomas

Day Long Meetings

They can be draining. Or they can be invigorating. It all depends on the energy you bring to the session. How you start, sets the tone for the day, for what you want to do and accomplish and get done. Contributing is key, the team doesn’t need a silent watcher doing other work. If you are remote, get ready to be on your camera, get ready to be engaged. Stepping out for a few minutes for that oh-so-glorious cup of tea is encouraged, but otherwise, stay on board. You can’t win every battle, choose the ones that matter most. And

December 9, 2024

Greg Thomas

Losing Creative Flow

When things go wrong, sideways, and you feel lost – all creative flow goes out the window. It’s one thing if creativity is a heavy part of your job – your livelihood depends on that flow existing to some extent – so you’ll need to put in the time. But when you don’t have that dependency, it’s an ebb and flow and the hardest thing with any creative endeavor is to get started. Show me someone who does creative work (drawing, coding, writing, speaking, etc, etc) and has never lost their flow? It’s impossible. Yeah, sit down at the chair

Finding Your Workspace

My first job, I can only describe as 12 people crammed into a 2-bedroom apartment.  If I moved my head to the left, I would make eye contact with a person 3 ft away, 2ft beside me was another developer and 2 ft behind me were the servers.  I once backed into the server and accidentally hit the keyboard triggering a copy. My second job was in a larger building, but they never had enough room so they kept moving us around.  In the few years I was there, I think I changed desks 4 – 5 times. Then I