I run moonpine.dev, where I help SaaS companies with strategy and product development. I also run sumi.news.
Say hello alex@alexmingoia.com. I reply to every email. You can also find me at 𝕏, or in person in San Francisco.
Socrates said the unexamined life isn’t worth living.
I say the over-examined life isn’t worth living.
Self-help books, journaling, daily questions, planners, quantified self, time trackers, finance trackers, health trackers…. robbed my joy and left self-doubt — not clarity.
Software engineers are great at devising solutions for problems they introduce. Versioning promises to alleviate the pain of incompatibility. But incompatibility isn't some force of nature. It's a design choice. Changes don't have to break things. Functions can be added, options extended, modules namespaced. Versions are often an excuse to break software, rather than a promise of something better.
Tools are a trap. What good are notes you never refer to? What good are todo lists you don’t do? You shouldn’t solve one problem by creating another.
Without constraints it’s too easy to get lost – to take too long, or build too much. Time boxing, requirements, and serving somebody instead of everybody force us to be decisive and do the best with what we have.
It's good to know which direction you're going, but be careful of sacrificing today to focus on tomorrow – it's the work you do today that matters.