Trying to get back on track after slipping up


Up until march of 2021 I was doing alright in my life and keeping good habits, writing regurlarly in my blog, exercising 3 times a week and even playing guitar some days of the week. Since then I have slipped up big time and I have not been doing any of that, only working and eating and repeating.

So this post is an attempt to motivate myself to get back on track. Tim Ferris has a [very useful video about the topic](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmgl_bT9_vc), that I gonna summarized here:

1. Expect it to happen. Don't be hard on yourself. Ruts will come in your life, and a lot of them. The same way as streaks of having good habits. So having those ebbs and flows are pretty much part of life and one have to learn to be okay with that fact.
2. Have a plan for after slipping up. Since it is going to happen, you have to be ready to get back on track. You can have a plan to start again with baby steps, like exercising only 5 minutes the first day.
3. Try meditation. Tim reccommends Sam Harris app but I believe any type of meditation could help. Meditation is useful because it helps you to stay in the present moment and let go of the past, and for me the harderst part of getting back on track is to stop feeling guilty about all the time I have wasted in the year and begin again with a fresh mind.

If I could add another point not mentioned by Tim is that every low period in your life has some positive stuff as well, maybe some good habits you do so automatically that you are not even aware of them anymore, in my case is reading and learning. One should try to be aware of the good things already present in your life.

I will end this post with a quote a saw today and liked it a lot.

> We’re in a freefall into future. We don’t know where we’re going. Things are changing so fast, and always when you’re going through a long tunnel, anxiety comes along. And all you have to do to transform your hell into a paradise is to turn your fall into a voluntary act. It’s a very interesting shift of perspective and that’s all it is… joyful participation in the sorrows and everything changes.
>
> -- Joseph Campbell


Part of my motivation for having a website/blog, was the curiosity of building something on my own

Behind the scenes of my blog


Part of my motivation for having a website/blog, was the curiosity of building something on my own, from scratch, relying on my skills as a web developer and being able to pick the tech I liked the most. So I decided to build everything by hand, instead of using a blog template or something like wordpress.

This is the tech behind the site:

- [NextJS](https://nextjs.org/): which allows me to use React, my favorite library, and also easily create pages for each section and blog post.
- [Chakra UI](https://chakra-ui.com/): I have very little design skills and Chakra UI allows me to build something that looks decent. As I heard someone once said "Being a developer, with Chakra I can design as I code".
- Markdown: for writing the blog post and then feed the files to NextJS and dynamically (at build-time) create a page for each markdown file.
- [Netlify](https://www.netlify.com/): for deploying my website. It is hooked up to Github so all I have to do is push the changes to a Github repo and it automatically deploys each new version. I'm planning to eventually move over to [Vercel](https://vercel.com/), which is the hosting platform from the NextJS team and in that way I will be able to fully take advantage of all of NextJS features.

And that's pretty much it, you can find the source code for my website on [Github](https://github.com/rodrigojv/rodrigovillalba.com).

What I need to keep improving on is my writing process and tools. I was using just VSCode to write new blog posts, and lately I've been trying out [iA Writer] and loving it, since it lets you focus on just the text on your screen and also allows you to export the text to a markdown file.

I'm also realizing that I make many writing mistakes and need to keep working on becoming a more smooth writer, for that I should probably get some help from other tools like [Grammarly](https://www.grammarly.com/). And that's on my todo list.


If anything has taught me in 2020 with COVID is that anything could change at any time

Mantras for 2021


If anything has taught me in 2020 with COVID is that anything could change at any time, no matter how solid our plans are, a pandemic hits and everything goes through the window, and what's left? For me is to adapt and not to cling.

Not to cling to outcomes.

Not to cling to a job title.

Not to cling to material possesions.

Not to cling to a specific version of yourself or your life. Including a version or your body and your mental state.

Everything is always changing.

So the mantra for this year is not to cling and be willing to adapt when a change comes your way.

Like Bruce Lee says

> Be like water; water has form and yet it has no form. It is the sofest element on earth, yet it penetrates the hardest rock. It has no shape of its own, yet it can take any shape in which it is placed

It is also something that I have learned in life and reflect now as I am about to turn 38, that everything always come and go, friendships, places, even your own body changes, your mind is not the same, your tastes, inclinations and pretty much everything is in constant flux.

So what remains is to be present with this single moment, today, right here and right now, one step after the other, because tomorrow is unknown and all I have is this moment.


I always thought of Bruce Lee as one of the most influential figures in movies and martial arts but I have never thought of him as I writer, let alone a great philosopher.

Thoughts on "Striking Thoughts" by Bruce Lee


![Atomic Habits](/posts/images/StrikingThoughts_book.jpg)

I always thought of Bruce Lee as one of the most influential figures in movies and martial arts but I have never thought of him as I writer, let alone a great philosopher. I have many times come across with his famous ["Be like water, my friend"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJMwBwFj5nQ) video but I thought that was part of some kind of gimmick he had.

Turns out it wasn't and he actually studied philosophy at the University of Washington and spent a lot of time writing and thinking about that subject. This book is a collection of his writings, and it really suprised my on how good and thought provoking of a reading it is.

Bruce Lee's most common educational and literary form was the aphorism, and this book follows that style. An aphorism is a brief saying or phrase that expresses an opinion or makes a statement of wisdom and the intent of Bruce with the use of aphorism is

> to arouse a heart-felt "call to arms" and not intellectual abrstraction, however valid such abstraction may prove to be.

After reading a statement that Lee writes

> ...the reader is now compelled to think for himself about the issue, which leads the individual to produce his own answer. Lee always challenge his students (both in classroom an thorugh writings) no to agree or disagree, but to _grow_.

I really enjoyed this book, I read it from start to finish but I think that this is a better book to read when you need inspiration about a subject or early in the morning opening a random page and reading a couple of sentences to give a good start to your day.

Lee writes about many subjects like spirituality, meditation and teaching. Here are some of my favorite aphorism from the book.

About teaching

> **A teacher is a pointer of the truth, not a giver of truth.** A teacher, a good teacher that is, functions as a pointer of truth, but not a giver of truth. He employs a minimum of form to lead his student to the formless. Furthermore, he points out the importance of being able to enter a mold without being imprisoned by it, or to follow the principles without being bound by them.

> **Put my words to the test.** Remember, I am no teacher; I can merely be a signpost for a traveler who is lost. It is up to you to decide on the direction. All I can offer is an experience but never a conclusion, so even what I have said needs to be thoroughly examined by you.

And finally this one about adaptability which besides being great quote, it summarizes Bruce Lee's philosohpy about life and also emcompases many ideas that he mentions throughout the book.

> **Adapt like water.** Be like water; water has form and yet it has no form. It is the sofest element on earth, yet it penetrates the hardest rock. It has no shape of its own, yet it can take any shape in which it is placed. In a cup, it becomes the shape of the cup. In a vase, it takes the shape of the vase and curls about the stems of flowers. Put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Please observe the adaptability of water. If you squeeze it fast, the water will flow out quickly. If you squeeze it slowly, it will come out slowly. Water may seem to move in contradiction, even uphill, but it chooses any way open to it so that it may reach the sea. it may flow swiftly or it may flow slowly, but its purpose is inexorable, its destiny sure.

In conclusion, always observe the water my friend.


Thinking in composition could be hard, the concept is simple, a component is composed of other components, but the path you should take to design with composition in mind it's not always clear

Thinking in React: Composition


A React Component represents an UI element and it can be composed of other components, but it is not always straightforward to think about composition when creating your own components, specially if you want them to be reusable.

For example a `Navbar` can be a component composed from navbar `Items`, but what happens when you want to reuse the same Navbar component in different use cases? Let's say you need one Navbar for authenticated users, but you also want to use the same component for guest users. How do you approach the design of such components?

In this article I share a few thoughts about reusable components and composition, based on my own experience of the past few years working with React.

## Wait as long as you can before thinking about reusability

The concept of reusability could be a whole blog post on its own but for this article I would just say that reusability should not be the first thing to think about when creating components. You should focus first on other more important aspects of component design like the name, the props and state.

If you need to create a `ComponentB` that is very similar to `ComponentA`, rather than modifying `ComponentA` it is best to copy paste the code from `ComponentA` to create `ComponentB` and adjust that component accordingly to cover that specific use case. You should wait to have at least three similar use cases in order to create one single generic component that covers all of those cases.

Premature reusability design could lead to a component that is hard to use and does too many things, which leads me to the next point.

## A component should do one thing well

For those who are familiar with the Single Responsability Principle from OOP, this also can be applied to React Components.

From the book Clean Code by Robert C. Martin:

> Single Responsability Principle (SRP) states that a class or module should have one, and only one, reason to change. The principle gives us both a definition of responsability, and a guideline for class size. Classes should have one responsability - one reason to change.

Meaning

**reason to change** _is equal to_ **responsability**

If we translate that to Components, there are a few ways of knowing if a Component has too many responsabilities.

## Props indicate responsabilities

Given the example.

```jsx
 <Navbar
    logoProps={{ svg, size, altText}}
    height={100}
    sticky={true}
    backgroundColor="blue"
    searchBarProps={{ onSearch, placeholer, icon }}
    navbarItems={NavItems}
 >
```

You can first see if it has too many props, the rule of thumb here is to see if using your component is starting to become a pain in the neck, because of how many props you need to pass, that's a signal of having too many props, too many responsablities.

Another aspect you could pay attention is the name of the props, in the above example `searchBar` and `items` could be passed as children of the Navbar instead of being props. Other component names for props could be a signal you can look for of having too many props.

The solution is to use **composition**.

```jsx
<Navbar
    height={100}
    sticky={true}
    backgroundColor="blue"
>
    <Logo>
    <SearchBar>
    <NavItems>
</Navbar>
```

## The name of the Component indicates responsabilities

You can also be aware of how you're naming your components, a complex name could be a sign of a complex component that does too many things. Using a lot of nouns in the name could also be indication of many responsabilities or even when you're tempted to use words like "Super" or "Generic" in the name of the component like "SuperDashboard" or "GenericTable".

```jsx
<GenericModalButton
  title="My Modal"
  modalFooterProps={ { okText: "Save"} }
  openModalButtonProps={ { text: "Open Modal" } }
>
```

In the above example the component includes in its name the nouns `Modal` and `Button` which could be two separate components rendered independently of each other, the only dependency being that the button opens the modal, but the button does not have to **belong to the** modal.

```jsx
<Button>Open Modal</Button>
<Modal title="My modal" footerProps={ { okText: "Save" } } />
```

But you could argue, what about if I want to use the same pattern of a button opening a modal in many different places? And that could be good argument but in this particular case, rendering two components repeatedly is not that bad. This goes back to the previous point of reusability, sometimes is better to repeat yourself than trying to generalize something that does not need to.

## Conclusions

Thinking in composition could be hard, the concept is simple, a component is composed of other components, but the path you should take to design with composition in mind it's not always clear. A couple of helpful tips are first and foremost, always try to keep your components smalls, not too many props and rather simple names. And finally, if you can, try to leave reusability concerns for later stages.


Principles on working effectively as a developer inspired from classical guitar

The classical guitar way of working effectively


In 2020 I picked back the guitar after a while, I have been on and off with the instrument since I was a teenager. Yes, I have not been consistent at all, and last year with all that time at home I decided to try getting serious again with my practice. I watched a lot of videos from classical guitar players, where many of them talked about the importance of effective practice. One would think that guitar playing is pure fun and playing songs, but no, most classical guitarist have very structured and disciplined practice routine, for them playing an instrument is like work.

And that got me thinking about the importance of having an effective way of doing your work in software development. There are actually a lot of parallels between practicing an instrument and programming that I wanted to mention in this post, maybe it can spark some new ways of approaching your own work more effectively.

## Plan your work

Guitarists plan their practice beforehand, they write down every exercise and song they are going to play, and how much time they are going to spend in each item, and they stick to that plan strictly.

I don't like to write todo lists for my day, but I like to write what I need to work on for the next 1 or 2 pomodoros (more on that later). That helps me stay focus on only one thing, one single task to complete, and not get distracted and go on a refactoring spree of some old code that I did not even write.

[Viktor Rentea](https://victorrentea.ro/) even recommends that you should write the commit message before starting writing the code for that commit, I guess is like visualizing what the final code would look like before starting writing it.

It's useful to give the mind a destination to stay focused on.

## Be mindful of your technique

This I don't see many people talk about or pay attention too, but I think it is extremely important.

Guitar players try to be constantly mindful of their posture and hand technique, even when they are just warming up or doing easy exercises. They say that the mind picks up every motion that the finger does and records it as a habit, even the bad ones. So it is essential to teach the mind good habits, because the bad ones are very hard to unlearn.

The same I think is true for writing code. Whenever I pick up a new code editor I spend some time developing good technique using it. I try to learn the shortcuts, so I can be effective in my writing and don't waste time searching for things with the mouse. If you use tools like IntelliJ or VSCode it would save you a lot of time if you learn the shortcuts, IntelliJ can even automate most of your refactor.

I also try to be mindful of other small things like my posture, how many tabs I have open, where I poistion my windows (the work chat window to the side or hidden, the editor front in center), and so on. Those details seem like insignificat but when they add up they can slow down your work and you will get tired more easily.

## Work in small chunks, and take breaks

You're talking about Pomodoro, right? You may ask and you are right. I'm not going to spend time here describing Pomodoro because it's a very popular method and a lot has been written about it on the Internet. Even people who don't use the term "Pomodoro", apply the method to their daily work, like guitarists. They practice for 30 to 40 minutes and then they take a break or change to another exercise, that is basically doing a "pomodoro".

This has been the most useful method I have incorporated in my work day since I've become a professional, and if you take nothing else from this article but learning about Poomdoro, I have done my job.

## End your work day on a happy note

Guitarists end they practice playing a song they like or doing something that makes them feel relaxed, the idea being that you should give yourself a reward for working hard and end on a state of mind that will make you wanna pick up the instrument again the next day.

I try to do something similar with my work. I like ending my day with something that is working, no matter how small it is, it should be working and without bugs. If I'm working on some new feature, I try to finish part of that feature, and finish it well. I should be able to click on the app and all should be working smoothly, or my unit tests should all be passing and green.

If the thing I'm working on seems to be more complex than I expected, and I notice I'm not going to be able to make meaningful progress that day, I try to reduce the scope and focus on some smaller section of the task, something that I would be actually able to finish that day, and finish well.

End on a high note and make yourself wanna come back the next day, and come back motivated.


I spent a lot of time in my childhood and early-teens, playing and watching tenis.

Atomic Habits: best book on habits


![Atomic Habits](/posts/images/AtomicHabits_1book.png)

I spent a lot of time in my childhood and early-teens, playing and watching tenis. I was always fascinated by the rituals tenis players do during matches, either before a game or during and after points. Of course I would find myself imitating my favorite players and copying their little routines, either fixing my racket strings in between points or hitting my shoe with the side of the racket before a serve. I did not exactly know why I would do such things, but I knew that it did something in my brain and it allowed me to be more focused during a match.

Flashforward to recent years where I read "The Power of Full Engagement" by Loehr and Schwartz, where they explain why tenis players do those weird routines that almost look like nervous tics.

From the book about the time between points routines:

> In the sixteen to twenty seconds between points in a match, the heart rates of top competitors dropped as much as twenty beats per minute. By building highly efficient and focused recovery routines, these players had found a way to derive extraordinary energy renewal in a very short period of time.

So those habits have a very strong purpose of resetting their bodies for the next point and also their minds, because they also use those routines, to quickly assess what they did wrong in the previous point, forget about it and go to the next point. All of that in a fraction of time.

Since reading "The Power of Full Engagement" I became obsessed about habits and routines, reading a bunch of books about the subject in the past 5 years. And hands down, "Atomic Habits" by James Clear is the best I have encountered, not only about habits but about human behavior and the inner-workings of the human mind. As opposed of other books, this one does not spend a lot of time talking about experiments and researches, it goes straight to the point. It tells you this is how the minds works when it comes to good and bad habits and this is what you could do about it. And I certainly appreciate that from a book in the self-help/productiviy genre.

But how about "The Power of Habit" by Chales Duhigg? You may ask. That book came up with the Habit-Loop concept of Cue -> Craving -> Response -> Reward, and it is mostly theoretical. James Clear took that concept and expand it to present a practical framework for developing new habits and avoiding bad ones.

- Cue: for good habits make it obvious, make it invisible for bad.
- Craving: for good habits make it attractive, make it unattractive for bad.
- Response: for good habits make it easy, make it difficult for bad.
- Reward: for good habits make it satisfying, make it unsatisfying for bad.

That simple framework covers every possible aspect you could think about habits and the book is full of easy strategies to follow. Overall it is a very easy read, with short chapters and without any fluff. I just finished reading this book for the second time and it will probably not be the last.


Last year we did a couple of performance reviews at work, where we assesed what we did good and what we could improve.

Being good enough is good enough


Last year we did a couple of performance reviews at work, where we assesed what we did good and what we could improve. And I struggled to talk about both sides, specially when it came to highlight my strenghts at work.

And that got me thinking about something I read in "An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth", a book by Chris Hadfield, where he talks about "aiming to be a zero" in your contribution at work or in a team environment.

From Hadfield:

> Over the years, I've realized that in any new situation, wheter it involves an elevator, or a rocket ship, you will almost certainly be viewed in one of three ways. As a minus one: actively harmful, someone who creates problems. Or as a zero: your impact is neutral and doesn't trip the balance one way or the other. Or you'll be seen as a plus one: someone who actively adds value. Everyone wants to be a plus one, of course. But proclaiming your plus-one-ness at the outset almost guarantees you'll be perceived as a minus one, regardless of the skills you bring to the table or how you actually perform.

So in a way I didn't know how to talk about my strengths because during the year I was not actively thinking about them and was also not trying to get recognition whenever I did a good job. In the same way, I was not harming anyone else's work or getting in the way. I was aiming to be a zero, trying to let my work speak by itself.

This also reminded me of an interview Time Ferris did with Spotify's CEO Daniel Ek, where he mentioned having a motto at Spotify encapsulated by the swedish word "Lagom".

From the interview transcript:

> Lagom in Sweden is—I think the best translation I could give is it’s just about right. It’s not too much, and it’s not too little. It kind of, I think, encapsulates the Swedish spirit more maybe than anything else. In Sweden, it’s very much a culture of you shouldn’t stand out. You’re part of a collective being, and the best thing you can be in the Swedish society is being lagom, just about right, not too much and not too little. That’s kind of what every Swede aspires to be, which feels crazy if you’re an American because that’s about individuality and expressing yourself and don’t be afraid to kind of take space, but it’s completely opposite in the Swedish society.

And I actually like that approach a lot, and is something I should aspire to do as a team member at work and as part of a society. I will keep doing my best and don't try to stand out, but also being mindful of not being too lazy or having a negative contribution.

Being good enough is good enough.


Halfway through 2020 I made the decision of staying out from social media.

Giving up social media


Halfway through 2020 I made the decision of staying out from social media. I've long before deleted my Facebook account but was still spending a lot of time on twitter and I started to feel the same mind-agitation that I had before when browsing Facebook.
&nbsp;  
&nbsp;  
So I stopped login-in on Twitter, never had the app on my phone anyways. And man oh man, it feels great! No more other people's thoughts and ideas on my brain, it feels so much spacious. Like Daniel LaRusso I have recovered some balance.
&nbsp;  
&nbsp;  
This is not an article to encourage you to do the same, I'm just writing about what is has helped me personally.
&nbsp;  
&nbsp;  
Social media and the internet in general is going to a really turbulent phase in my opinion, we shall see what the future holds. I really miss the days where you proactivily use the internet to find what you needed, nothing was there in your face to overwhelm your state of mind.
&nbsp;  
&nbsp;  
Going forward I'm planning to use Twitter to post links to my writings and promote things I consider are worth a retweet or an interaction.


Blog