DEV Community: Ahammad Sabir

Art of saying no!

Ahammad Sabir — Sat, 02 Nov 2024 17:55:22 +0000

The art of saying no!

Saying no is a hidden yes to something far more important. When you’re faced with choices, it’s often difficult to make the decision. But when your resources are limited, you can’t choose both, and expect them all to produce best results. That’s the price of divided focus! But it’s often not as elusive as it could seem! Let’s see where it goes.

Suppose you’re faced with a choice. You’d have to choose a research topic, and you like the 90 topics that came to your first search result. All of them sounds interesting. You can’t seem to figure out which one to try, right? Then how would you decide? Or perhaps a choice to buy the next laptop. Buy a gaming laptop, or a mac - build a PC or maybe just settle with an iPad? Tough decision, right? How would you decide! Let’s see if this helps.

This is more of a personal observation. But I think you’d understand the story. It’s the apple vs google story. Apple, the rich kid’s gadget. Shiny tool, and even fancier apps in it. Why is it so popular? I really like the apple’s engineering philosophy. I think Steve Jobs did it, or maybe later on someone else. I’m not sure. But apple is notoriously known as the slowest ones to ship the features. The perfectionists! The against the grain people. Apple has a philosophy where they first try to completely build a feature before moving onto the next one. It's also extremely slow in the process. The same feature from android comes to Apple, what, 10 years later? Still, you'd agree, that for quality, they really are the best in the biz. It’s more reliable! You can trust that it will always work! Google on the other hand, has quite a different approach. Instead of pushing for a central goal, they have more of a 50 startups combined approach. And it usually doesn't affect them as much, cause their other sources of revenue (search, youtube, ads) covers almost the entirety of it. But once in a while, you'd see stuff like ChatGPT slipping through their cracks. You know the ones that wrote ChatGPT, Sam Altman and his crew, right? Did you know the people that made the engine that runs it came from google! By skipping the long plan, even the giants make mistakes like these! Last I've heard, they had almost 20 chat apps, that got killed. It's safe to assume, anything from them would eventually make the list, https://killedbygoogle.com/

Here's the point I'm trying to make, no matter how good work you’re doing, it's never going to matter, unless you have the end goal in mind. It gets easier to say no to stuff, once you know goals, it becomes extremely simple by then! Say no more people! And say yes to things that align. You don't have to be Apple to say no, but you will have to do it, but if there is something you care about, chances are, you'd have to say no to protect it. Always!

https://dev.to/coder-wolf/art-of-saying-no-2ckb

Where is tech going?

Ahammad Sabir — Thu, 31 Oct 2024 18:33:28 +0000

If you take a look back at the past, the world of tech will show you a little direction. What else can you do to make predictions, but look at history! That is our best bet!

The world of tech, or more broadly, innovation usually happened in the name of problem solving. Us, humans, had some problems, that needed solving. And the ones among us who could, made something to fix it. The roads, rails or the simpler things like a lamp, all came from a need, and then somehow we found the solution. Our ancestors did. But where does it lead us?

In the grand scheme of things, even the most meaningless events could connect to something bigger even the smaller parts not being conscious about it at all. That's the beauty of natural course. It leads to somewhere even if you hadn't made plans to do so.

But it helps when you can get an idea!

Through our exploration, and seeking answers, we've come to this point so it must be not completely pointless to try! To understand. So we can either avoid an accident, or at least brace for impact if it's unavoidable!

Now simply apply the same thing to the field of science and tech. It has advanced so much in the past few years that it's starting to feel like the innovation explosion. Things have reached a tip off point. 10 years’ progress in months. That's what happens when the progress has started to finally show.

Where is the tech leading us? Even through simple and quite ordinary things like igniting a fire has led to this phone in our pocket. The memes in your internet has created the single smartest being on the plannet. The tweets somehow created the next ultron, or jarvis? Perhaps! But even the plumber who helped build the house, of the guy who invented electricity, can you imagine, was somehow responsible! Whatever the outcome is, good or bad!

Now where does it all lead us? Will we ever know until it's too late?

Take care of yourself!

Ahammad Sabir — Mon, 28 Oct 2024 16:11:12 +0000

Remember that last passion project? You pulled all nighter, only to find out it meant the next week would go completely sluggish, almost like a nightmarish, all those burnt out days that come after, it's not easy, right!
Our body, and mind. It's our tool, for almost anything that we do. Be it our work, hanging out, or doing something random, can you do things when you're not in your fully charged state! Imagine trying to push a sofa while your arms are injured!
Almost the same thing happens when your mind is tired! You can't push your mind to it's limits, and not suffer the consequences. You could say the deadlines are important. But so is the results, and your own wellbeing! Let me convince you why your wellbeing is important 🙂.

Suppose you're dealing with something you care deeply about. Something you want to make sure to give your best. The best way you can show up, at that position, is to make sure your tool, that is your mind, and the one that's housing it, is fully recharged. And incase you're a human, chances are you're going to have almost million things you'd care about. Whatever that could be. You want to make sure, that you're at your best capable version, to take care of that situation.

It starts with your health!

There's really two way of looking at this. In the short run, and the long run. In longer horizon, you'd want to make sure, that you don't suddenly fall on the floor at the slightest stress, just cause you weren't fed enough. And your small habits, the tiny walk towards the positive direction, in terms of health and self-care habits, it'd slowly become better. Just one fruit a day, or simply maybe drink a glass of water more. Just small, but positive acts. These are going to make a positive impact in the long term. Cause like it or not, even if there's a slightest chance, that you are going to care about something in 5-10 years, you're likely going to be better off being in a condition, that you're not so bed ridden, that you're the one that needs help, not the other way around!

In the shorter time, you might not feel that much of a difference. That's why it's so easy to neglect health, and the good habits. It'd show more in forms of frustrations. But it's kind of like this, the harder you push yourself, the sooner you break! To keep your work interesting, try to maintain the goldilock's rule instead. It'll keep your work fun, while also making sure it doesn't lose it's quality, but increases instead!

Care about your career? You can't work your best when you're not fully charged. To provide the best result, you should keep yourself at a good state.
Care about your child, family and the people around? To care for them, you have to stay capable, no!

One way of looking at it is this, when you're offering your service to someone or some cause that you care about, would you want it to go with a bad quality or not the best results? Chances are you're not. But then again, you can't do your best work, unless your tools are at it's best health!

So if you're a boss, take care of those tools, and if you're reading this for yourself, care for the things that gave you this much in your life!

I personally go about it in a 5 pillar system.

Sleep
Diet
Exercise
Water
Meditation

It could be flawed, but it's a personal choice. You could find better resources at experts or other resources.
Here are few of my personal pickings:

Try to imagine, you're starting working out for the first time. Now you'd go ahead and do 100 push ups or run 5 km on the first day. Chances are you're going to stay at home, cursing out the guy that showed you all these 🙂. But if you took it slow, it would've been painful. Painful that it takes so long to see any kind of progress!
It's better to take things slow. It almost always is better in the long run. No matter what you're doing, if you want the results, you have to go through the boring, repetitive and slow burning process. Staying in the boring consistent routine is the hardest thing to do. It makes you want to kill yourself. Out of boredom, you wish something exciting would happen, even if it's bad. You miss the rush. But the thing is, results, usually, are far more exciting, even if it means having to go through the mind numbingly boring and excruciatingly repetitive work that makes you want to just throw it all apart to find that fun again.
But really it all starts with yourself! So, first shine the tool, you can make the craft fine later!

To start out, here are some small guide, small action steps to get started:

Sleep: Try to set a consistent wake up schedule. Research shows it's the best way to fix the circadian rhythm.
Diet: Maybe add just one good stuff in your diet next time. Fruits, or whatever.
Workout: Start with just 5-10 minutes jogging from the first day. Increase later as you see fit.
Water: Try to track it a bit more. I myself keep a water bottle that is 750ml, so 3 bottles of it a day means I had roughly reached my goal for that day.
Meditation: It's usually a good practice. The outcomes are quite astounding. Try for one month, and you'd see. Here's a good video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0GtmPnqAd8&t=194s&pp=ygUKbWVkaXRhdGlvbg%3D%3D

Thank me later 😄😊😊