More than a decade ago, I applied for a job in Brussels and part of the process was to pass a psychological assessment. It was a very interesting experience and I learned a lot from the results. The report said something like: "the brain of Mr. Mejías is unstructured and chaotic. Nevertheless, he manages to solve complex problems and has an eye for details". Based on that, the recommendation was to work on improving my methodology of working. The whole report was so accurate that I decided to follow that advice and I went in search for a methodology that would give some structure and reduce some entropy in my brain.
Around that time I was reading "The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul", by Douglas Adams, which is part of the series of Dirk Gently, the holistic private detective. In that book, Dirk Gently was saying to someone in a café: "I am not like other private detectives. My methods are holistic and, in a very proper sense of the word, chaotic. I operate by investigating the fundamental interconnectedness of all things." Ha! Might this be a method for me? I thought. And despite the fact that Dirk Gently uses the term holistic to scam his clients to justify trips to the Bahamas because they might be somehow connected to the current investigation, we are talking about Douglas Adams here, and his jokes always have a hidden truth, despite how silly that truth might be.
I know the term holistic sounds very esoteric and it is usually presented in opposition to the more scientific approach of reductionism. I say that it can be used not in opposition but complementary to reductionism. In reductionism, one splits a complex system into smaller and simpler parts, so that by understanding the parts, one can understand the more complex system. However, many times we are faced with the situation that a system is larger than the sum of all its parts. This is because the parts are connected to build the system, and they influence one another. Therefore, the system is formed by its parts and their interconnection. A small but relevant detail.
Why am I telling you all this? Well, this week I had the honor to participate in the "Talking Postgres" podcast, hosted by Claire Giordano, where we talked about the fundamental interconnectedness of all things. I’m still wondering how I managed to convince Claire to bring this topic to the podcast. I think she just trusted me on this. And the reason I wanted to talk about this topic is because I know that there are many people whose brain is wired in a similar way to mine, and that the ideas presented in the podcast might help a few of them to find a method that works for them. It might also help folks whose mind is well structured and organized, because the fundamental interconnectedness of all things is there to be found regardless of how your brain works.
In the podcast we talk about solving technical problems around PostgreSQL, chess, music, building the PostgreSQL community, and the connection between perfectionism, Darwinian evolution, and PostgreSQL releases.
The podcast can be listened to on Pocket Casts, YouTube and different platforms as listed on the Podcast website https://talkingpostgres.com/. If you happen to listen to the episode, I’d love to ask you to send me your thoughts, or maybe we get to meet at a PostgreSQL conference and we can talk about these ideas.
Hail Slonik!
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