But you're not losing either. You just haven't won that "thing" you're after. That's it, you're not there yet, but you're on the right path. When you connect, I don't know, heck, I don't even know when I'll connect. But you're not losing, you just haven't won yet. Or so the speech goes.

If you give out sloppy directions with AI, you're going to get sloppy outputs. This is the proof of the words - Garbage In, Garbage Out - that humanity has been saying for years with respect to leading and guiding your team. Give people vague and cloudy notions, and what you'll get back is vague and cloudy solutions - not very valuable.

Want to go faster in your work? Get prepared, see the target, figure out the steps to get there, and go faster. There is no "go fast" button. There is prep, work, time, and effort. AI has been around for 5 - 7 years (even longer), but has exploded in the last 2 years. And now it is going fast.

Throw a ball in the air, and it drops like a rock, picking up speed as it reaches the ground.  Depending on how much gravity is applied, the rock will crash into little pebbles, a shell of its former self. End what I know about science and gravity. But right now, in our work, we are in a race to the bottom, and many are taking advantage of it.

When firefighters arrive at a blaze, they assess where to start and begin. Time is of the essence; lives are at stake. I'm sure they get it wrong - misjudge the wind, can't see all the variables, don't know about that indoor propane tank, etc, etc - but they have to start somewhere. If given the opportunity to stop time and spend hours and even days determining the proper approach, I'm sure they'd take it.

We need steady listeners. We need slow to responds. We need methodical actions. We need pragmatic solutions. Loud voices only get you through the meeting, but they don't figure out the problem, they don't create the solution, they don't test its viability. Choose who you want to be.

Whatever you do, wherever you are. Never stop asking yourself this question. The concept of grown-ups and becoming something at 25 is out the door. You can change careers all throughout your life and look back one day and go - "I did all that stuff." And beyond that, it keeps giving you something to aim for (if you're into that). We might mature, but we are always growing and never stop.

At its onset, the Internet brought more information to everyone. But you had to look, you had to dig, you had to marry information together. With AI, anyone can get anything at any time, and if they don't understand, they can keep having it broken down to the point that they do understand it, with little to no emotion brought into it.

Now is the time to push your boundaries. Now is the time to take the leap. Now is the time to try something new. Now is the time not to give up. You can't reset on yesterday, and tomorrow is whatever it will be. But today, it's all you.

AI might be faster. But you always knew someone that was faster than you. Whether you sat beside them, you heard them speak at a conference, or knew of them through myth or legend, you always knew there was someone faster than you out there. But you weren't reminded about it all the time, as we are with AI. Your choices are to throw up your hands and go Oh well, figure out how to catch up, or create a new metric to evaluate yourself on.

The poster child for "It's going to take too long" is emptying the dishwasher. We look at all the dishes and start to make them bigger than it is in our heads; There are so many. I don't know where they all go, I'll have to look around. Some of these have odd shapes. Then we add in the other variables;

Nothing. Unless you let 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. 

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.

Want to know what industries are in need of help? Look for the gaps. What are people complaining about? What do they wish they had? What are the problems they are trying to solve? What solutions require a flair of creativity? Those are the gaps, and they are the opportunities for growth and development. They are not easy to fill or address, but they are always 100% worth it.

Not at your desk. But for your work. For what you do. What do you deliver? What you strive to do the best day in and day out. No one can ever fault you for giving your best, for trying to accomplish your goals, and for standing up for what's right. And if they do, then it's their problem and not yours.

If every decision were easy, we probably wouldn't have a word for it. It would just be a thing that we do. Hard decisions aren't easy, and when I look at people and teams I have worked with who have had to make them, I have always respected them for making those calls. Sitting at the table, making those hard decisions is never easy . Easy decisions are throwing someone under the bus; Hard decisions are working with them. Pick your decision.

Whatever you are building on, you need to know what is beneath to be successful. That means you need to be curious. Low code, Vibe Code, No Code is great until you need to figure out why something isn't working. You don't buy a car without looking under the hood, don't make the same mistake with the code that you've purchased and/or are working on. Be curious.

If I receive an invite in my inbox, and I miss it, as can happen quite a bit. Nudge me after a few hours, and the invite is there. Don't remind me 15 minutes before the meeting is about to start that I'm attending this meeting. Make my acceptance, not my tentative acceptance, mean something.  Make it mean that I'm actually attending, not "auto-accepted".

I've had a few meetings I start this way. If there is dissension in the room and we're discussing a key problem, I'll throw out this statement - "Are we all on the same page?" If we are not on the same page, there is no reason to move forward. Everyone needs to be on the same page, to understand the problem, the reason that you are all here, before you start getting to solutions.

Don't fool yourself. There will ALWAYS be a Better Way. It might not be as easy to get there, but it will be better. Nothing stays the same.

There is an old story about the Carpenter's House - the last project before he moves on. At the end, he finds out he's been building his own house the whole time, and cut corners all along the way. So now he's stuck with a "meh" house with lots of fixes needed for it. I don't think you're going to get your own cloud tenant on the last one you built for a client, but if anything, if you're wanting to separate yourself from other in the market with your work - pride, value, commitment - these are all things that AI has no concept of. But we do, so always build it like it's yours.

The wishlist is everything we hope to have and achieve one day. It's everything that if we had, things would be perfect. It's a good thing to aim for, but make sure you update it regularly. Wishes change, and so does the list.

Undeniably, one of the best scenes in the movie, Moneyball. "He Gets on Base" Build your team for what they can do, what you think they can do, not who they are, not what their accolades are, and not how many followers or repositories they have. For who they are, and what they can do. You can teach anyone anything, and if they have the drive to get on base, you can take them anywhere. Keep your hiring simple - can they get on base (and yes I love baseball).

On Incredibly Hot Days, we stay inside or don't do much outside, because it's super hot. On Supremely Cold Days, we stay inside or don't do much outside, because it's supremely cold. Neither are great conditions to get work done, but if these were the only conditions you had to work with, you'd find a way - dress warmer, work in the shade, bring hot drinks, use a fan, etc, etc. Perfect conditions don't exist, and they can't be created, but you can take steps to make them better without stopping your progress altogether.