Tag: efficiency

You

Be a (good) shark 🦈

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This Medium post lists some great ways to make your life easier: Focus on next steps. Be present. Say no a lot. Focus on one thing.

One really surprised me, though: speed up.

I was going to add a point about slowing down but then decided to mix things up a bit and go the other way.

Alex Mathers

I second that idea. 👍

“Speeding up” is what I like to think of as relaxed focus. Just keep moving forward; the motion keeps your momentum up and keeps your thoughts and actions fresh and relevant. No more paralysis of analysis.

Get moving. Prioritise a kind of fluid, calm urgency in your life.

Now, Ted Lasso said “Be a goldfish“, but I’m going to say “Be a shark.”

A quick drawing of a shark moving quickly.

Okay, a shark is a deadly predator. Don’t do that; set that aside for a minute.

The best quality about sharks is that they understand relaxed focus. A shark is always moving purposefully, but it’s never in a hurry.  A shark don’t stop or wallow or get bored or frustrated.  A shark is always going somewhere and always has a plan. A shark’s movement seems to feed its energy rather than expend it.

So in life, be a shark. Keep moving purposefully and own your little neck of the ocean.

See also

“Creativity is not a talent. It is a way of operating.”

“How can a guy think and hit at the same time?”

Software Dev

Clarity is (even) more important than brevity

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I have published a post or two about the powers of brevity. But we programmers sometimes take it too far.

Can someone tell me what these integers represent? 

case upc(Int, Int, Int, Int)

No? Me either.

This is how associated values are pretty much always done in Swift. But thanks to this post by Marco Eidinger via iOS Dev Weekly, I discovered something new and clarifying: it turns out that you can actually label your enum’s associated values too. People just don’t do it for some reason. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Can you tell me what the integers represent now?

case upc(numberSystem: Int, manufacturer: Int, product: Int, check: Int)

Isn’t that a little easier to understand?

I run into the assumption sometimes where people mistake brevity for efficiency. Brevity shouldn’t mean sacrificing valuable context for slightly fewer words. Thanks to the Marco Eidinger post for pointing this out explicitly. 👍

Clarity is more important than brevity.

Marco Eidinger