Philosophy of life and gardening A Website by Steve Richards steverichards.notion.site I enjoy gardening the most when it aligns with my broader philosophy of life, so I thought readers might like to see that philosophy and see how I apply it to gardening. These principles are in random order, just as they are applied in life. Sometimes my focus is on having fun, other times I'm focused on planning, still other times I just want to kick back and chat to my friends and neighbours. Introduction / Pareto principle / Balance / Fun / Working for happiness / Family / Purpose / Order / Planning / Flexibility / Variety / Strategic Resilience / Motivation / Sustainability / Invest to save / Kaizen / Kindness / Giving back / Experimentation / Learning gardensphilosophylife
The Thing-deadline calculus Now, I understand deadlines. I understand that the plane will take off whether or not I’m on it, or the importance of beating the holiday retail rush, or that "the show must go on". It is perfectly clear to me how people use timekeeping technology to coordinate social activity. It’s actually quite remarkable when you step back and look at it. But, over the years, I have observed that there is a difference between those examples and the ones around the delivery of Things, which tend to be completely arbitrary. When you wrap an arbitrarily complex endeavor up in a neat launch date, the goal seems to be more about coercing the people beneath you to absorb the overhead of all the details you left out—that or sweating it yourself. As a tool for coordinating human activity, I have come to believe that the Thing-deadline calculus is, considering more sophisticated alternatives, unnecessarily crude. Dorian Taylor, On the "Building" of Software and Websites Deadlines are bullshitNever enough timeDriving engineers to an arbitrary date is a value destroying mistake planningproducts