A 36 year old man gets into his lycra tights, hops on his bike, and rides to his yoga class. Once there, he's glad to hear the class will focus on hip openers, because his own hips have been quite stiff lately. Then he dedicates his yoga session to his 4 month old daughter, which makes him feel quite emotional.
If I could tell my 20 year old self that this man is me, he would burst out laughing.
Similarly, if I could tell my 15 year old self that I would be paid to share my technical expertise in front of a classroom, he would be happily surprised.
None of these two things were part of who I imagined to be back then. But whenever I’m open to change, I find tremendous joy in the learning process and wonderful situations that unfold.
Perhaps this is why I find Agile so compelling. The thought of planning every little detail of a software system upfront seems daunting, unnatural, and stiff. In contrast, taking work in chunks at a time, and making change a protagonist of the process, seems very compatible with real life. This is how evolution works, and it’s been very effective at producing incredibly complex and sustainable biological machines.
I’ve recently started to read Antifragile, and I suspect it’s going to be a very important book in my life. I’m only 20 pages in and I’m really liking where it’s going. There might even be a dedicated blog post to it!