What I Have Been Doing Lately

For the last few months, I have been focusing on a few big things that kept me away from my writing routine. During this time, many of you sent me messages asking when I’ll be publishing the next article. The answer is now clear: I am going to publish right now!

Here is what I have been up to:

• This summer I did some traveling in Europe. I spent a week in England, a week in France and three weeks in Italy. It was a wonderful time where I reconnected with my family and my roots, I cleared my mind and regained a fresh perspective on reality. I didn’t realize how caught I was in my professional daily life until after taking a break. When I returned home from my trip, I felt refreshed and had a new lens on life and work. Taking time off is essential; not only for selfish and personal reasons but also for business. After a break, productivity increases and you get much more stuff done.
• The fantastic company I work for, DreamBox Learning, received a substantial investment ($130M) from the Rise Fund. As a result, things at work kicked into a new phase focused on growth and innovation. As the head of engineering, the last few months have been a wild ride, and my responsibilities have grown broader. I have learned a lot more than I thought I would ever learn about business, and I am only barely scratching the surface. It reminds me of my early coding days when I was learning like mad but could not see an end in sight. By the way, I have never found or seen “the end” of the coding learning curve. There cannot be an end because whenever anyone gets close to it, it gets pushed further away. I suspect that the same is true for business and most fields of knowledge.
• In my teens and twenties, I used to be very fit. I spent years practicing strength training, martial arts, boat racing, etc. However, for the last twenty or so years, I have been focused on my career, and my physical activity has not been consistent. After coming back from Europe, I decided to change that and get back into shape. As a result, I converted a guest room into a gym. I equipped it with free weights, a power rack, a cable machine, bands, etc. For the last six months, I’ve been working out six days a week for 60 to 90 minutes every day. I have also been reading all I can on the topic of resistance training and fitness. My goal is not to add years to my life, as I am not interested to live 100+ years. Instead, my goal is to add life to my years, which means being healthy, looking decent and keeping mentally sharp.

CoderHoodThe state, condition, character and nature of being a software coder; the state of belonging to and evolving in a software engineering organization where software developers (AKA coders) work and operate. is alive and well. Traffic on these pages has been increasing at a steady rate, despite the publishing pause. I have many articles in the works, so stay tuned!