Most of the time, people don’t want to change because they don’t know what change looks like or how long it will take. Neither question can you answer with certainty. With all the time in the world, you may never be able to answer that question. You just have to change and work your way through it.
I was reading this article a while back about StackOverflow’s decline in traffic over the past two years and what contributed to it. The best part was the last line, where it discussed “the Fork” – where hopefully StackOverflow isn’t dying, but it’s in the midst of a Fork to figure out what it is to do next. I feel that analogy can be applied to many in software right now. I was having a…
Teams shift based on external factors – opportunities and threats. One makes them, urges them to take on more, excited for what is next. One pushes them to hide, close ranks, become insular, and worry about what may come. Every shift is an opportunity and a threat, depending on who you are and what your narrative is. The question becomes, what your team sees as a threat and what you need to do to shift…
When you cycle, you often times go into a high gear to exert less power. Then, when the hills come, you drop a gear to reduce resistance. For each person, when they go up/down a gear, the level of resistance and when they change a gear is different. But regardless, they do it for the same reason – to maintain momentum.
The first 15 pages are the test. They might not be your speed – perhaps too fast, too chaotic, too slow – perhaps that’s the narrative of the story taking place, and they want you to feel that. But they are a test. If you can get through the first 15, the next 15 might be better, or maybe you’ll have enough knowledge to know that they aren’t as bad. Then, when you’re 150 pages…