Geekflex

One of the things I miss most about being a student is the regular change of scenery. A typical day of my student life involved being in several different places throughout the day, from classrooms to student common areas to offices. I’d rarely stay in one place for very long. Not only was each class in a different physical location, requiring me to get up and move around a bit — but in each class I’d see a different subset of friends and acquaintances.

When I started my full time job, I quickly became agitated by the monotony of office life. Each day I’d be surrounded by the exact same subset of coworkers. I would sit in my one office, without anywhere else to go. Eventually the end of the day would come and I would go home. Sometimes I would go to the bathroom; a trip made infinitely more exciting by Uncle John’s Curiously Compelling Bathroom Reader, conveniently placed in every stall. My office building was in total suburbia, so meeting up with friends for lunch was all but impossible. I was in a private inner office, which meant I had no access to natural light and was pretty much just left alone all day every day in the same room, sitting on the same chair, with the same four walls boxing me in.

I’m not exaggerating. This is what office life is. The contrast between a dynamic student lifestyle and a “professional” lifestyle is staggering. It’s not that the stuff I was working on is boring — far from it. It’s just that the environment was about as stimulating and invigorating as white noise. I couldn’t focus on anything and my mind would wander. It doesn’t have to be like this.

I might be an exceptional case, but I’ve always concentrated better when there were more things going on around me. The background noise of a coffee shop would help me focus better. When studying for my final exams, I’d take over a conference room at school with a few friends. The occasional distractions we provided each other was like the seasoning on an otherwise really bland steak. It made for an environment where studying was bearable, and I managed to get much more done than I would have been able to if I’d stayed home alone with a textbook.

The day I was most productive at work was the one day I managed to work remotely from another lab. But working remotely (or working “from home”) isn’t the solution. A “change of scenery” doesn’t mean “working alone.” Collaboration is important, and you need to be able to ask questions of your teammates, and brainstorm with them. Instant messaging and e-mail only work up to a certain extent, but nothing compares with face-to-face interaction. This was the main point of Fred Brooks’ keynote speech from OOPSLA ‘07 (listen to the mp3 if you have 1.5 hours), and there is research and evidence to back it up.

The best thing to do is offer some alternative scenery at the workplace. IBM’s software lab in Markham, Ontario is a stellar example. The top floor of this lab has four different “theme rooms” that employees can use. One room is modeled after a medieval library with antique bookshelves full of ancient-looking books and wing-backed chairs. Another room looks like a fishing cabin with couches and paintings of canoes along the walls. My favourite room was the “Japanese Garden” which had a rock garden and an indoor waterfall between rice-paper walls. To make these rooms accessible, each employee receives a laptop as their primary workstation. If you ever need a change of scenery, just unplug your laptop and go sit near the waterfall. The theme rooms offer a change of scenery and, since you’re not leaving the lab, your teammates are always close by for when you need to collaborate.

My ideal environment would be just like the study space we improvised during exam period: a big room with a small group of coworkers. We don’t all have to be working on the same things, but just having other people there is a motivator. The occasional distractions and small talk would keep the day interesting, and I’d be able to focus better on my work. I know this kind of environment exists, because this is almost exactly what my Extreme Blue internship was like. The trick is going to be finding a similar environment now that I’m no longer a student.

I’m going to let you in on a secret: I think better inside the box. When faced with limitless possibilities and endless choices I get overwhelmed and don’t know where to start. I’m pretty good at getting from point A to point B, but I need to know is where point B is. I can figure out where point A is by analysing the current situation, whatever that may be.

When it comes to programming, point B is usually a working program that performs a given feature set. Point A is me with my set of tools. Those tools include programming languages, problem solving experience, Google-fu and whatever I have installed on my computer. These are among the items I have in my box. There are lots of things I can do inside my box, and the better I understand these tools the more I can do with them.

In life, my box contains all the people I’ve encountered, everything I’ve ever learned and all the experiences I’ve ever had. The universe according to me is everything that I can see from within my box. The skills I’ve developed, from professional to social, are also tools in my box. When graduating from university was my point B, it was these tools that I relied on to make it there. I honed and sharpened them and got used to them. My box was geared entirely towards achieving my goal. Once I graduated — my point B reached — I was left with a box of tools, and the feeling that most of them were no longer relevant. I found myself wondering now what?

I’m stuck in a box.

The lesson I’ve been slowly coming to terms with is that the universe doesn’t fit in a box. This box wasn’t always closed. The goals and tools that were there had to come from somewhere. I’m the one that limited my vision and focused too closely on a particularly moment. The box needs to open up again and let new goals find their way in. I can learn new skills and new tools and sharpen them as necessary. I’ll meet new people and let them help shape part of my universe. I just don’t know how I’m going to do it yet.

But I do know that I’m getting out of my box.

See you on the flip side. ;-)

Okay, there are really two hardest parts about blogging.

The most obvious one is actually sitting down to do it on a regular basis and not letting it stagnate. There’s an easy solution for that, and it’s the same one every blogger will you: make a regular schedule and stick to it. Then it becomes routine. It’s just like going to the gym. That’s a horrible analogy because I hate going to the gym. But I love writing.

The more subtle quirk to blogging has more to do with the writing process itself — something I know very little about. The last time I received any kind of formal education in “Creative Writing” was probably in high school. The hard part for me isn’t in translating my thoughts into words, but in knowing when to stop and just click “Publish”.

If I’m left to my own devices, I might just ramble on into eternity flitting from topic to tangent in some kind of endless pattern. If I’m not careful, a post about code could end up with unicorns and rainbows. I need to be able to realize when I’ve said my piece and move on — and not end up in a situation where I’ve combined several unrelated blog post ideas into one massively incoherent post.

And here’s the worst part: once my post is done, I’ll read it over. That’s where insecurity kicks in and I begin to second-guess myself. It’s like going over a final exam to double-check all my math, and then asking myself if I really solved the problem using the right method. Often, my first instinct is correct — but looking over the same problem again I start doubting myself. At this juncture in the writing process I feel like I’m faced with three choices:

• Publish now and release something imperfect on the world
• Revise and edit, running the risk of obscuring my original point
• Discard the post entirely and it will never see the light of day

It’s more like a flow-chart, really:

It was my leaning towards that last option that caused my previous blog to fail more than anything else. There were a number of posts that I’d written which never made it out of the Revise <-> Publish loop, and many more that were written and then discarded.

Publishing takes a combination of guts and apathy. You have to realize that no matter what you release, it will never be perfect. The Revise <-> Publish loop is more likely to just dull down your point until it becomes a softened nub and loses its impact. Each iteration will remove some of the edginess and replace it with something more politically correct, more agreeable, more average. The post ceases to become an expression of original thought, and ends up being a reflection of everyone else’s thoughts. And that’s how I lost my voice in the noise.

In Elizabeth Gilbert’s recent TED talk, she talks about a disembodied “genius” that provides creativity as a “psychological construct that protects you from the result of your work.” This is why I was motivated into starting a new blog instead of reviving the old one. Calling the blog by something other than my name allows me to distance myself from what I write. I can establish an identity that is mostly-me-but-not-entirely and be far removed from it enough to release something that isn’t perfect. Now when I see something I can think “this is a topic that would be great for Geekflex” as oppose to “this is something that I should blog about sometime.” As for those things that don’t fit on Geekflex, that’s what twitter is for.

Why am I starting a new blog?

Because I finally feel like I have something to say. My personal blog in the past was just that — personal. It was more like an online, public diary than anything else. I never had any ideas about what direction I wanted to take it in, and what I should say on it. It existed for the sake of existing. Then Twitter came along and provided an outlet for all those little personal-things-I-wanted-to-say and effectively ate my blog. In the meantime a lot of things have changed — I’ve changed, too — and now I know what I want to talk about.

Graduating from university brought about many changes in my life. It was a complete 180-degree turn. When I was in school I always felt like I was going forward, and now I feel like I’m looking back more than ever. All the goals I had set for myself as a student, I’ve achieved. Following graduation, those goals are in the past. For a while I felt like my best years were behind me, and what a bummer that was. I thought “Is this it? Is this what I spent all that time in school for? Well this sucks.” And I longed to go back. If I could do it all over again I think I’d take one course per semester and stretch the fun out for as long as possible.

Then it happened. I became inspired. It hit me that growing up doesn’t have to suck so much. If I can’t find the things in life that make me happy, then I can invent them. Instead of whining about life, I’m going on a mission. I’m on a mission to make growing up suck less. My mission will be documented here, on Geekflex.

Here are just some of the topics I have bouncing around in my head even now:

• What was missing in my university education
• How the “professional” life contrasts with the student life
• What makes being a new grad suck, and how it could be made better
• Life, the Universe, and Everything

I’m going to make life awesome again.