One of the intentional behaviours I have tried to adopt is to always be learning a new skill of some kind. Over the last years, I have taken the education to become a gym instructor in my gym. I have passed the theory exam for my hunting license. I sleep outside once per month throughout the year to deal with the challenges of camping in various weather conditions. I am working on my shooting skills (shotgun is OK; rifle I am working on). There is a chance that I may run my first ultramarathon next year. And so on. Also in my work I am looking to continuously explore new research areas and to reinvent existing research areas as, at least for now, AI is having an outsized impact on software engineering. The consequence is that this also means letting go of activities that I have been doing for a long time in order to create space for the new activities. As the saying goes, the people that don’t change are dead. Unfortunately, as Benjamin Franklin said, many people die at 25 and aren’t buried until they’re 75. As a reflection and challenge: what new skill are you learning? And what are you letting go of?
reflection