Why? This simple question obsesses me. There are so many levels to it. "WHY do I want a coffee right now?", "WHY do I work as a software engineer", "WHY does the customer want that feature?", "and WHY do they want to achieve THAT?".
Knowing why you do what you do every day helps you to figure out if that is really how you want to spend your life. The first article this week helps us to answer this question consciously.
By the way - WHY do we want anything consciously? Researchers at MIT found out that there are indeed some things that are only possible with consciousness.
The answers to these "why"-questions improve the way we work and can increase our contentment with what we do. To help us uncover these answers we can use mental tools that help us think about the specific question at hand. One of these mental tools, YAGNI, is uncovered in an article mentioned below.
Reading Recommendations
How To Know What You Want - Personal Growth - Medium
A story about the journey of finding out what you really want; and how meditation can help you to reconnect with your true needs. This resonated deeply with me. Meditation is a part of my life for three years now. It has gradually allowed me to become more aware of myself, and my thoughts and feelings. It is a great tool to see through the "clouds" and connect with your inner self.
Does Consciousness Have a Function? | OUPblog
Have you ever heard of the "hard problem of consciousness"? It is about why physical processes inside our body and brain result in the specific experiences we have. In this article, researchers study which cognitive processes are enabled by consciousness, in contrast to phenomena that do not require consciousness.
You probably heard "You Aren't Gonna Need It" in regards to a feature. But what does this mean in practice? And how rigorous should we apply it in our everyday project work? This article contains several money quotes like: "Yagni only applies to capabilities built into the software to support a presumptive feature, it does not apply to effort to make the software easier to modify".
End note
When this was interesting to you, there might be someone you know who will also like this. Please consider forwarding this mail to that person.
Have a great week
Simon
P.S.: If you found an article you think others might like and that fits this newsletter, I’d love it if you write me an email.