Shreef

I try to be as honest as possible with myself. I’m treating my life as a time limited experiment. I’m the observer and the main subject of the study at the same time. and I find it entertaining and saddening at the same time.

It’s saddening as the observer part of me is always watching all my actions and evaluating them, and the results don’t always say that I’m the person I want to be or supposed to be.

One of those problems is the fact that if I have two choices, and I know which one is the right thing, still I would convince myself to choose the wrong one. this doesn’t happen always. I would assume that 30% of my choices go like that.

There’re a lot of reasons depending on the situation, but my emotions and desires are the ones to blame in all those situations. it’s the fight between brain and heart. it sounds cheesy and unscientific but it’s the simplest way I can describe it.

Those are the sounds that tell you to sleep for more minutes while it’s time to wake up. the things that makes you eat ice cream while you’re trying to lose weight. the things that makes you procrastinate.

Those are simple examples with short lasting effects, but it’s worse when the choices may affect me for years without anyway to reverse that. specially if those choices involve other people. people’re not forgiving by design specially if they’ve no reason to give you another chance.

It’s interesting to watch other people going through the same dilemma. I can say that I can sometimes see through some people and know whether if they know the right choice or not. I would try to help them kill their wrong choice, but if they choose the wrong one, what can I do?!

I don’t try to judge people or treat them like idiots or assume they’re evil. they just followed their desires and emotions. I do that too. how can I blame someone if I can’t even control my emotions and desires. still there’s a line that no body should cross ever. something like killing for example isn’t forgivable.

We humans are complicated creatures. God made us smarter than others, but gave us more emotions that weaken the logical part of our brain. I can’t say it’s a bad thing. I think it’s natural. there should be something that put some balance in humanity. still we can’t be perfect.

That’s why I try to be forgiving when people come to me to apologies just as they’re sorry about what they said about me or did to me while they don’t need something from me more than that. It’s easy to smell if someone is apologizing just to get something from you.

I think as much wrong choices we make, there must be forgiveness and something to learn. the fact is that there’s no way to stop making wrong choices, so let’s learn from our wrong choices and forgive ourselves and forgive others as much as we can.

I had a chat recently with my freshly graduated sister about how she has to start adapting her mentality to the upcoming new changes in her life. she has been a student for more than 16  years and from her grades and her history as a student I can say that she mastered the skills of living as a student. she really did it way better than me when I was a student.

One of the things that were mentioned during our chat was the importance of having a role model. at school they didn’t teach us about this and it’s one of the billion things we have to figure out on our own. and anyway, each one of us have to figure out who is his role model on his own as this is a personal matter and totally depends on your preferences and how you see your future.

I remember the time when I’ve just finished high school and was starting to go deeper into reading about programming and I didn’t have someone to guide me. I joined a number of programming forums and started to read the posted questions, answers and who’re those who post the best answers. during the first few months, I made a list of few smart programmers who seamed to be the best (and history proved it). they were what I wanted to be like on the short term.

I started following their answers and discussions on the forums, and luckily at that time blogging was a new trend and most of them were starting to create their new blogs where they started to share more and more about their ideas and experiments. I don’t remember that I’ve ever missed reading any of their posts at that time.

While I was still a nope, I used to always try to implement their codes again and add to it. also, I tried to beat them at answering the questions on the forums. I didn’t know the answers of most of the questions, so I used to rush to my programming books and API manuals to figure out the answers to post them. yeah, some of the answers weren’t that good, but I was making progress everyday.

My goal was to reach the same level of experience of those smart programmers and develop the same good habits they have. that was the first milestone. it took me a couple of years to start feeling comfortable having discussions with them in a way that can make me and them feel that we’re all on the same level of thinking. this was when I started to feel that I need to add new bigger role models to my list.

I’m still in contact with most of those smart guys till now, but I don’t think they’ve ever thought that I was taking them as role models. I really appreciate the value they add to my life.

I had to add new role models to my list. so I started to follow some of the smartest programmers on a global level, and they helped in adding a lot to my experience and personality. they were actually the main reason I started contributing to a number of open-source projects.

A role model or a number of them is an important thing to help you keep track of your progress, they teach you indirectly, inspire you, and they help you know what you want to be and what’s not.

Just try not to fall in the trap of being a fanboy. your role model is a human. she/he isn’t perfect and will do a lot of stupid stuff sometimes. you just should know this well and try not to copy him/her when it comes to those bad things.

Don’t put limits on how hugely successful is your role model. if your huge role model is Neil Armstrong, Dennis Ritchie, Steve jobs, Mahatma Gandhi or any big name; try also to have other role models that you can reach their level of success in few years. then later add more successful role models to your list after being as successful as your old role models.

Just dream big, put milestones, and get the best out of each milestone.

I stopped watching football games like ~6 years ago when I was starting to realize that sitting on the couch doing nothing but watching a 90 minutes game is a waste of time and I can spend that time instead with my new addiction .. my computer.

Before losing interest in following football games and news, I was like most other boys in my age. following all European football games and spending the rest of my time playing football in real life and on the old play station 1.

Last week I tried to break the boredom and depression in my life and joined the folks watching the game between Real Madrid and Barcelona and the experience was good. I kept looking at the big screen for more than 90 minutes and wishing my old time favorite team “Real Madrid” would win the game, and for my surprise they won the game.

Watching a good game and talking about it with other people (specially, Barcelona fans) was entertaining and I decided to do that again from time to time. and here I’m writing this while watching another game between Real Madrid and Manchester United.

Actually I started writing this when I was listening to the commentator of the game talking about how big football teams use full time psychologist to make sure their players are always in their best mental conditions, because if the players are playing while in bad mood, their performance would go down.

It’s not the first time for me to know about that, but It’s my first time to relate this to work generally. I’ve been reading for years about how great companies try to make a great work environment for their employees to enjoy every moment of being part of that company. which comes back with benefits to the company in many different ways.

The first thing to come to mind when I talk about this topic is Joel Spolsky’s series of articles about building great place for software developers.  I even wrote about this topic before in 2010.

The 2 main conclusions I wanted to write about after watching the game are;

1. Money isn’t enough to make your team happy

While those football players are getting 7 figures salaries, and while they’re considered to be the best of the best in that industry, and that they shouldn’t be playing for fun as they’re professional players. still, this isn’t enough to make sure that they will play well and win games with high scores.

If they are sad, angry about something or having anything bad going around in their minds, they won’t play as expected, and all the other investments that their clubs invested in them would go with the winds.

That’s why clubs get full time psychologists to keep watching their players and taking care of their mental health.

2. Get your team a psychologist

Yeah, if you’re the CEO of a company or if you have the authority to get a psychologist psychiatrist to take care of your employees, then you should do it.

The best and most paid football players always need the support of a psychologist, and I’m sure that your team of software engineers, designers, marketers and every one else need to have a one meeting each month with a psychologist, at least. and if you’re a big company then I think that a full time psychologist would be a must.

The psychologist will be most valuable in those days when there’re conflicts between your team members, and when there’re tight deadlines that are putting great pressures on your teams. plus all the other daily personal stuff that may your employees be suffering of. didn’t you ever try working after having a fight with your wife/husband?! (for example)

You may agree with me about this or not, but I would do that someday in my startup when there’s enough budget, and would advise my CEO and other CEOs in other companies and startups to do the same.

update: from the comments and discussions, I found that what I meant to say originally is to use a psychologist. my use of the word psychiatrist wasn’t accurate.

Dealing with annoying people is one of the taxes we have to pay for being alive. from your annoying relative who insists to tell you about his analysis of the political scene of the country, to your boss and co-workers who talk about “whatever” they talk about everyday.

The great thing is that at the end of the day you will be able to have a couple of hours alone and escape from the world. but during those  amazing hours, your brain will try as hard as it can to fill the gap that your annoying friends, family and co-workers left empty.

C’mon, you’ve extra brain cycles and your brain needs something to process. it will pick something randomly from your memory and start playing with it.

Oh, it found something interesting to play with. what about that pretty girl you knew recently and had some few chats with?! she is smart, pretty and you both have a lot of things in common. what do you think? does she see you as interesting as you see her?

Umm Nah!, she is a pretty smart girl and many handsome, and smarter men would want to marry her. but you’re just a geek. all you can talk about is either how we’re living in the Age of context or how you’re planning to use Nodejs in your next project. why would she pick you then instead of one of those guys?!

Fine, this won’t come to a good end. why not try crying or something?! this should make you feel better.

Yeah, but what can you do anyway. you’re too old to join a band or something to increase your chances with her.

Man, see. let’s forget about your forever-alone problems for a moment. I just found something more interesting in your memory.

Do you remember that meeting at work when that co-worker made fun of you in front of your department manager? oh, that shitty person was trying to make you look dump to kill your chances to get a promotion. what the hell man? will you leave him get away with it?

What about getting angry for now? getting angry will help your inner devil rise to put a plan together to give that asshole a painful lesson about the dangers of messing with you.

Cool, you got exhausted from thinking about all that. I feel bad to see you like that. let’s find something else to process.

Didn’t you ever think of becoming entrepreneur? yeah, isn’t that cool? you can be the CEO of the next Apple, Facebook, or Google. you gonna be super rich and famous. everyone will admire you and everyone gonna point at you as the smart visionary that was able to take humanity to the new age of bla bla.

You gonna invest all your money in philanthropy to save African children. your name will be on Forbes’s list of 30 under 30 like all those smart people you admire. but wait a second!

Man, you’re 25 and you didn’t even start. you don’t even know how to start. and you’re living in a developing country and your dreams won’t be able to get the needed support from local investors or government.

Oh, poor kid. you don’t even have a chance to live in Silicon Valley. I feel bad for you!

Ok, this was exhausting and kinda fun. I feel tired. let’s sleep to be able to continue your miserable life tomorrow.

Zzz!

____________________

Don’t you have a lot of those conversations with your brain (yourself) too? they never come to a good end. this makes me hate spending time alone. people can be annoying but always the most annoying person I’ve to deal with, is me.

The topics your brain is able to start are endless. your childhood, your aging parents, existence or non-existence of romance  in your life, co-workers, your work perfectionism, your debts and monthly bills. the sky is the limit. it depends on your imagination.

I don’t know how to stop that. I’m dreaming of that day when I will be able to shut my brain up and be able to stop it from bringing those painful thoughts on.

It’s annoying. I’m so damn annoying and I wanna get rid of me.

I’m 2 months late to put a new year’s resolution but the idea hit me couple of hours ago. I was thinking about how to reorganize my life and plan forward for the coming few years, but I remembered that I didn’t even write a new year’s resolution since 2008.

anyway, better late than never. so here’s my list for the coming 10 months:

• Ballet dancing! (turned to be a bad idea)
• use Nodejs in a real project
• reach a satisfying decision about the best way to structure an MV* frontend JavaScript app
• build a mobile web app
• build 2 mobile apps for Android with the same features and look. one as a native app, and the other as a hybrid app to compare both methods realistically
• work on my UI design skills for web and mobile
• read more about product design and UX research
• buy a bike to use for daily transportations in Cairo
• buy a new phone and give my 2 years old phone to my young brother or sister
• go to gym (a big lie .. but I have to list it anyway)
• start writing again for PHP Master
• write a new blog post here each week
• try to remember parent’s birthdays early enough (mom: Aug 7th & dad: Oct 9) to get them presents. I never did!
• travel to another country for some days
• learn to cook healthy food and try to stop eating fast food as much as possible
• redesign this blog
• stop caring about what others say or think about me
• memorize and understand part of Quran
• start a strict saving plan and pay all my debt

This isn’t everything on my mind, but I think this list is enough to keep me busy till the end of year. hope I will do +90% of all that -isA-.