I know. It’s been ages (well, weeks, but still). Don’t worry, everything is OK. Even great! So, what I’ve been up to?

Well, I hate to say it, but I just got a little tired with writing. No, not for good. But I felt I needed a break. I found myself spending 9 hours a day in front of a monitor at work, and then spending 2–4 more at night writing. That’s way too much for any normal human being, both physically and mentally.

So, at first I just used my free time to do nothing (i.e. watch television . A couple of weeks later I suddenly felt like this is a great time to go back to my hobby from a couple of years ago: photography. I also decided that while I’m at it, I should indulge myself with a new camera (time to go digital).

Ironically, this decision “forced me” to spend 4 (“free”) hours a day for the past two weeks researching, comparing, reading reviews… on the Web. So, I found myself staring at my monitor even more than before. But that’s it. Today, I finally bought a camera!

Anyway, here’s what’s going to happen. I am NOT ditching this blog. Believe me, I have a lot on my mind. I just need the time to “dump” it. I’m just… slowing down.

Meanwhile, it would be great if you would continue to be not only faithful readers of this blog, but also faithful viewers…

You are all invited to visit my Flickr page. It’s currently still very modest, but I hope it will soon grow. Comments (as always) are welcomed.

So, till the next post (better sooner than later)… say cheese

Flora and I shared an office for three months. Now, I am not the kind of person who easily opens up to people I’ve just met. But after a couple of weeks, Flora’s presence seemed like the most natural thing. It was as if she was always there.

It was quite a rough time for me at work. At least it was “supposed to be”. But thanks to Flora, I don’t remember it as such. It was actually fun going to work during that time. We had the strangest talks and the greatest laughs. We had a personal sign language and jokes no one else around understood. We even talked about writing a blog together (unfortunately, it was my fault we eventually didn’t). And all of it happened in the short time we worked together. I can safely say she helped me survive these three months at work.

Flora was the kind of person few people could stay indifferent to. She was smart, funny, and fun to talk to. She left her job at about the same time I did. Our parting just blended into many other goodbyes. I hoped we would stay in touch, but with my new job and her trip abroad, we didn’t manage to.

A couple of weeks ago, she died in a car accident.

I knew Flora for only three months. We merely shared an office. But the greatest thing about Flora was that this didn’t prevent her from reaching, connecting, and making others want to do the same.

I will miss her. I already do.

The conversation was with one of my colleagues. The context: my last day at work. My colleague took me aside to say goodbye personally, and among other things, he said that he has always appreciated my patience and calm responses to every question he had.

Now, I certainly don’t have any intention to brag. The reason I am telling you this is that these things took me by surprise. I love helping people and sharing knowledge whenever I can, but to be honest, I don’t consider myself too calm. It’s not that I get angry when I help people. But I always felt that sometimes I become a little too passionate about the message I am trying to pass. Passion is usually a positive thing, but when you are engaged in a mentoring session or a professional discussion, you must be open-minded, and listen to each other.

So, why did I feel that my eagerness is sometimes an obstacle, while my colleague felt I am calm and attentive? I think the reason, at least in my case, is the chameleon effect.

You see, this person, who by the way I highly appreciate, is in fact a very calm person. I have never heard him raise his voice or act impatiently. And that’s where the chameleon effect comes into the picture. I guess that when I talk to a calm, patient, and attentive person it is almost impossible for me to act differently. When one side of the conversation is already pleasant, the other side will shortly follow. It is as if my colleague had an effect on me when we talked.

But when I am part of an already charged conversation, I immediately become ultra-passionate, and sometimes too passionate. This passion at this level in that particular context is interpreted as a challenge, so the other party becomes even more eager to prove his point, and so on. Now, it can all lead to a very interesting discussion. But there’s also a chance that the participants will become so focused in their own arguments that they will fail to engage a real, open, and fruitful conversation.

The chameleon effect makes us match our act to the surroundings. Of course, our nature and qualities affect the way we behave. But when we interact with another person the way he behaves also affects us. Think about the meaning of the word “interact”. It means to act upon one another. When you are engaged in a conversation, you are not just exchanging words and ideas. You make the other person respond. He, in return, makes you respond. Both your responses, their content and the way they are presented, are highly affected from the way the other acts.

The challenge is breaking the cycle. If you are aware of these dynamics, you may be able to control them. It probably won’t be easy at first, but when you interact with people, try to pay attention to how you respond. When you feel your response was counterproductive in its nature, try to think what triggered you to respond this way. Make a mental note, and next time try to identify these dynamics before you respond.

Naturally, it will be a process. But in time, you’ll learn to control the way you interact instead of automatically responding to the other person’s challenge. Your interactions with other people will become calmer, more focused, and more effective. You will eventually get rid of the chameleon effect.

Somewhere along the way, we have forgotten that life (and business) shouldn’t be a race. It should be a journey. And like any other journey, we should take our time, enjoy the scenery, and even make some detours, whether or not they seem to serve any immediate goal.

In a journey, nothing is a waste of time or a waste of energy. It’s not that everything is “meant to be”, but we can certainly learn from whatever comes our way.

But to do well in your journey you need some tools in your sack. One of these tools reminds me of a tale I once heard. It goes something like this…

***

Once upon a time there was an old Chinese wise man (all good tales have one, don’t they). He lived in solitude in a monastery surrounded by a thick forest. His mission in life was to pass on the ancient secrets of martial arts to the younger generation. Once in three years the wise man opened the doors of his monastery and chose an apprentice to pass on his knowledge to. The chosen apprentice lived with the wise man for three years, until it was time to choose a new one.

One night, the young apprentice noticed that as evening fell his master would disappear into the woods and show up again only after midnight. He was even more surprise the next day when the same thing happened again. After a week, the young apprentice decided to follow his master and see what he was doing out there in the woods.

After the daily lesson finished, the young apprentice waited in his room until he saw his master going toward the woods. He followed him, making sure not to be noticed. After walking for an hour, the wise man stopped. He put down his sack and sat down on the ground. The apprentice watched him quietly. The old man started talking to himself. The apprentice could not hear what he was saying. Suddenly, the old man stood up and began to move around. He seemed to repeat the exact same moves he had taught apprentice earlier that day. Strange, the apprentice thought to himself, but he said nothing to his master the following morning.

The next day, the apprentice again followed his master into the woods. And again, he was witness to the same strange act. The same thing happened the day after, and the day after that.

After a week, the apprentice’s curiosity overcame him. He decided to ask his master the meaning of his behavior.

“Excuse me master, I must humbly ask you, what it is you do out there in the woods every night?” the young apprentice asked once his daily lesson was over.

“Each night”, answered the wise man, “I go out to the forest and teach the trees and the stones the secrets of martial arts”.

“But that doesn’t make sense”, the apprentice said indecisively. “The trees and the stones will never learn martial arts. They cannot move. This is just a waste of your valuable time”.

“You may be right, the trees and the stones will probably never be able to practice martial arts”, said the wise man. “But it is certainly not a waste of my time”, he continued, “as every night the trees and the stones teach me, in return, the nature of patience”.

***

Dedicated to all my friends and colleagues with whom I had the pleasure to work for the past seven years.

I know this sounds somewhat flaky, but cats do have it all figured out. They know exactly where they are, and they know exactly where they are going. Cats know exactly what their purpose is in life: being cuddled as much as possible. And if that’s not enough, they have nine lives and they always land on their feet!

For us, life is somewhat more complex. Few of us know where they stand in life, and even fewer know where they are going. And with this ignorance by choice, it’s no wonder that so many of us sense that something is just not working right. And we still have no clue what it is.

Not that it is really our fault, is it? How can we make sense of our life when we constantly have to juggle between work, family, friends, hobbies, some more work, the house chores, and maybe just a little more work? How on earth can we possibly know where we stand in this hectic reality?

I don’t know if you’ve ever been in an airplane’s cockpit, but you must have seen one in movies. The amazing thing about an airplane’s cockpit is the surprisingly narrow view of the external world the pilot has through the front window.

Imagine flying a 30-ton machine, controlling it, navigating it, being responsible for the lives of hundreds of people, and doing so while being able to see only a fragment of what’s going on in the external world. A pilot cannot see the airplane’s wings. He cannot see whether the wheels came down or not. He is not able to visually verify that all engines are working. In many cases he flies over endless oceans, so what he sees through this narrow window doesn’t really help him get a notion of the plane’s geographical position.

The secret lies in the second overwhelming thing in an airplane’s cockpit: the amount of controls and gauges. When you enter the cockpit, you cannot remain indifferent to the richness of lights, numbers, and sounds – all designed for the sole purpose of enabling the pilot to get a sense of the real status of the plane.

This vast amount of information seems unmanageable at first, but without it there is no chance in the world the plane will safely arrive from one point to another. The pilot must have a clear picture of the external world, the status of the airplane, and last but not least, how they relate to one another. His control panel helps the pilot create this picture in his mind. 

In our everyday lives, we tend to move forward blindly. It’s not that we are not aware of the reality around us, but we see only a fragment of it – we are looking through our cockpit’s front window. We are running forward without halting for even one minute to check where we are positioned in our lives. Imagine what would happened had the pilot ignored the gyroscope, which tells him whether the airplane is balanced or not. Imagine what would have happened had the pilot trusted only what he sees through the front window of his cockpit. That’s exactly what we are doing in our personal lives.

What we need is a control panel – a set of gauges that will help us understand where we are. Based on this data we can decide where we are going and how to get there. Unlike the airplane’s control panel, though, our personal control panel will not provide us any useful data without our help. The data will not just be there for us to use.

In the next post, we will start building and using our personal control panel. Until then, stop for a minute and think what you might be missing by trying to navigate through life one day at a time, responding only to what you see through your front window.

A few years later, I had a good job with a nice salary as a software developer. By then, I already had a degree in computer science — the profession I chose after I had finished my military service. So, here I was with a nice job, working in the profession I had chosen for myself, living with my beloved wife, surrounded by a well-selected group of friends, and having just enough free time to do whatever I felt like doing. It should have been perfect — just as I had planned it — but something just didn’t feel right.

If this sounds even remotely familiar, you are in a good company. Many of us find ourselves wondering what it is that doesn’t feel right. We have all the reasons to be happy and be satisfied with our lives, but something keeps bothering us. We don’t know exactly what it is, but it is definitely out there — walking with us wherever we go.

We don’t think of it 24/7, but it is affecting almost everything we do. Sometimes it makes us worn-out when we allegedly have no reason to be. At times, it makes us edgy without any apparent cause. And sometimes this mysterious feeling remains hidden for years until it hits us like driving through a brick wall.

When you have an headache you probably take a couple of Aspirins. If they work, that’s a reasonable solution. But if that headache just keeps coming back, you will probably do whatever you can to find out its source. Treating the symptom will not solve the deeper problem.

The problem is that when it comes to that strange feeling that something is not working as planned in our lives, most of us don’t find the time or the energy to explore its origin. Maybe it’s our demanding reality, maybe it’s denial, and maybe it’s just lack of awareness, but the fact is that many of us are living with this feeling without any serious attempt to change it.

The good news is that if you are still reading this post you are probably aware of this feeling and denial is no longer an option. So the only option is to clear some time, gain some energy, and start working on a solution. As in any journey, you will have to decide where you are going. You will have to choose your path. But first, you will have to find out where you are.

If something just doesn’t feel right, you first have to find out what it is. If this doesn’t sound easy to you, you are probably right – it isn’t. But it is the only way.

So, why did I feel good during my military service? And what made me feel things are not working when everything was supposed to be great? We will try to figure these questions out soon.

In the next post, I will describe a method that might help us begin to understand where we stand: what makes us feel that something needs to be changed.

My name is Lidor Wyssocky and I’m a software quality specialist. I know it sounds a bit like the starter of a “something anonymous” session… and maybe in some sense it is. For the last three years I’ve been writing almost exclusively about software development and how to make it better (non-geeks please bear with me for just one moment).

It started off quite simply. Software development is, after all, pretty isolated and self-contained. Isn’t it? We geeks spend all day playing with our computers, thinking about how we can put our hands on the latest gadget, and talking in a language nobody else understands (not that anyone really wants to understand it).

So what on earth do I have to say to you?

Well, as I’ve learned throughout the years, life in the software industry is first and foremost… a life. You think, you create, you interact. You love some of the people around you. Others, you can’t stand. Sometimes you are in control. In other times, reality seems to be controlling you. There are so many forces working around you, so many constraints, and so many people affecting your life although ultimately they are exactly in the same position you are. You are constantly trying to find your path, to move forward, to achieve more, to earn more, but the destination is not always clear.

So, there you have it: we are all in the same mess. At least many of us are. Where does it leave us? Well, I guess it is up to us to make sense of it all.

No, I am not some kind of a guru. Don’t expect any instant solutions that will solve all your problems. You won’t find them here. Decaf is merely my attempt to take a step back every once in a while, to look at our reality, to see the bigger picture, to analyze it, and to try to figure out how we can make it better. Do you want to join the ride?

All passengers please unfasten your seat belts. We are about to begin…