Necessity

A couple of years ago I read High Performance Habits by Brendon Burchard. In it, Brendon outlines six habits of highly successful people, based on his experience coaching hundreds of successful business owners. For the most part, it felt like an advertisement for Brendon’s coaching courses. Despite what I felt was a barrage of marketing disguised as a book, one of the habits has stuck with me: Creating Necessity.

The idea behind Creating Necessity is obvious. When something has to be done, you will find a way to do it. As a practical example, I’m sure almost everyone has experienced the rush to complete a project before a deadline. Given enough time to do the project, it often doesn’t matter when the deadline actually is; we end up rushing in the last few days or weeks anyway. The deadline creates necessity, but only when it seems close.

The difficult part of performing this habit is not understanding it. It’s doing it. In the example above, the deadline, and therefore the necessity, is created by your boss, or the expectations of a client. In your personal life, you get to create the deadline and there is no consequence to missing it.

So why this blog?

In the last year or so, I’ve found that the necessity required to be a better engineer has been lacking at my workplace. Sure, if I improved my coding, or my ability to write clear documentation, or my communication skills, that would improve the quality of my work. But I don’t have to do any of that to perform well in my workplace.

That’s where this blog comes in. It’s a platform for learning. A reason to do more than watch YouTube videos in the evenings after work. The solution isn’t perfect. If I don’t post anything there will be no consequences; but it does provide a reason to try new things, follow courses or learn a new programming language.

I am hopeful that the satisfaction of recording my progress as I learn and try new things will provide enough motivation to keep learning, even on the days when it feels like too much effort. In the past I have gained valuable knowledge from other people’s personal websites, and I hope that someone will learn something from mine.

What to expect

This section is more like a note to myself than anything else. I won’t make any promises, since this isn’t a formal undertaking or a well planned exercise.

I’ll certainly try to write regularly; otherwise what’s the point? As for content, I imagine it will consist mostly of technical articles detailing whatever it is I’m currently working on. Generally, those articles will have to do with embedded systems and programming. There may be a few book reviews, general thoughts and some music sprinkled in too.