In this post I am talking about the significance of small things in life, some lessons I've learned over time, and some random stuff.
Everyday I go to bed with bigger than life dreams, promising myself tomorrow is the day when I'll take a giant step to drop all my bad habits and be a better, more productive person forever. A life full of satisfaction is just a night away. I've been doing this for may be over 2 years. Nothing changed of course. What actually mattered over time were the small things. All the new year resolutions, or stricter "code of conduct"s caused exhaustion at best, and dragged me into depression at their worst.
Small things keep accumulating over time, like the little bit of poison we eat everyday with "food". Many times I'd realize after it's too late, the little something has gotten so big that I have to cut it off altogether, or smother under the weight of little mistakes. A little bit of submission over time can make your employer feel like he own you. A little bit of lies, can mark you a liar for life.
But it's not all bad that come from little things. I have just made myself such that I see negative first. It is supposed to be a positive post, but a small step it is.
Small Wins
Winning is a habit. There are many theories that'll nod in affirmation, I won't mention in this post. You have to get into the habit of winning to keep winning. No biggie, win small win frequently, and soon you'll be on the track of tackling any challenge with an invincible attitude, and you will actually score big wins.
Small Losses
When I first started out with Python, it was all too easy. I was so super confident I can do anything with my dragon slayer. I of course fell on face many times, again and again. They never felt like a battle lost, they were small. Insignificant. But it did it's job in bringing down my morale for a long time. No matter with how much enthusiasm I'd start something, something in me always kept mocking me, "you'll fail", and I did. It still haunts me sometime, but I've got over it pretty well.
When you are just starting with something new, be little careful and build a momentum with small wins, avoid losses howsoever small they would be.
I don't mean don't start something challenging. Do whatever you want, be prepared, you will hit walls. And when you do, remember not to accumulate small losses, your mind is too stupid, fool it. For every loss you suffer, score 3 wins. It doesn't matter how small they are, just win something small, minute I'd say, it doesn't matter, just win.
Small Habits
Habits are hard to build and leave. It's hard to get rid of bad ones, it's even harder to build good ones.
I feel it to be very expensive to force myself out of (or into) something new. It takes a huge chunk of my always limited will power, leave me drained and exhausted. Leave me with too little energy to make myself do anything else throughout the day.
Instead of building a big habit of doing regular exercise, I made some small ones. Like eating some of my favorite snack bars every morning, but only if I do 20 some push ups. It's working better than my previous approach so far. I have raised the bar to 50 push ups in couple of weeks. Yes its slow, but I win every morning, get to eat my favorite snacks, and am building a healthy habit.
So the takeaway, instead of bringing a big change in your daily routine, bring a small one, and if that too is too much for your puny self, bribe yourself with a small reward.
Write better code
Enough talk about stupid meaningless life, let's discus some real stuff now.
Some small things can make you better at writing code.
Start with the smallest, most minimal version of your program, as featureless as it can be without losing its meaning, and build it. Software in some ways is like pottery, start small, iterate till you are satisfied, and then bake it with intensive testing.
That's about tackling a problem, but how can you make your code better. Well, make the smallest unit of your code clean and tidy. Now that smallest unit can be whatever for you, I think of a file as the smallest unit of my code. Start small, keep classes in their own files, keep the file small and beautiful. At the end of the day, when you are about to call your software "done", looking at each file of your app should fill your eyes with tears of joy. It should be that beautiful.
And I can't emphasize it enough, keep your files small.
Read code better
When I was just getting started with software, what would bother me a lot was "how to read software". I struggled a lot with it, mostly because I always took software too big for my mind back then.
Well, first of all, don't bite more than you can chew. Start with small software, start with software you think you can write yourself and increase the bar from there. Again, make several small wins before you raise the bar for yourself.
If the software is written well enough, you'll find it very easy to understand and pleasant to read. For example, I found meteor to be a great read and very easy to understand. Just dive in, read the readmes, big picture start revealing itself and soon you're reading a novel written in Javascript.
Small annoyances
And finally, small annoyances caused by the person sitting beside you can make you wish the flight will crash and you'll get a chance to smack his head into the running engine fan (or may be his feet first) before you can finally die in peace