Choose to Want

How many times have you heard the phrase "I have to..." or "They made me..." or "I had no choice...". Did you really "have" to? Did they really "make" you? Did you truly have "no choice"? Anytime you have a choice (which is almost always), you don't have to choose a particular option, and no one can make you choose that option. The option you choose is the one you want.

For example, you work at a place you dislike. Some morning, you may be tempted to say "I have to go to work today." Well, that's not really true. You have other options. You could choose to not go to work that day. You could choose to never go to work there ever again. There are plenty of humans out there that choose that option. What makes you different than them? There would be ramifications for sure. You may want to explain the situation to your employer; you may want to find a new job; you may lose your house and/or your family. You could choose to live in a box and eat dog food. The point is that you choose to go to work because you want that more than you want all the alternatives .. when you consider all the factors.

Humans rarely make other humans do anything. A man points a gun at your head and says "Give me your wallet." You give him your wallet because you want to more than you want a bullet hole in your skull. He is not making you give him your wallet unless he pins you down and forcefully takes it from you. Your boss (or spouse) makes you do something? Not likely, unless he/she is physically forcing your body to do it. And at that point, he/she is the one doing it, not you

There are certain situations in which you must do something. But these are situations in which there is truly no choice. Your body must die. You must obey the laws of physics. You can't choose an alternative in these situations (unless of course you are a superhero).

If you want to choose a happy life, think of the situations you encounter as opportunities to evaluate your choices (even the not-so-obvious ones) and go with what you want. If you think you can make someone do what you want, guess again. All you can do is provide more information to that person and hope that it motivates them to want what you want. Embrace life and be happy that you have so many choices.

It's all for humans

Ask yourself, who or what is going to use the code I'm about to write.

1. You're building a UI:
   "A human" you answer. Certainly, that's the whole point of a UI.
2. You're building a service or API:
   "Other applications / systems" you answer. Directly, yes. But who's using that application / system? "Yet another application" you answer. OK, but who's using that one? "A developer" you answer, or "The sales group", or "A website visitor". What do all these "users" have in common? All humans.
3. You are fixing a bug deep inside some nasty code:
   "This stinks, I hate fixing bugs" you answer. Well hopefully you're making the code better to help out the next human (programmer) that visits that code, not to mention the human asking for the code to be fixed. 

Software is cool, but what makes it cool is its usefulness to human beings. Without being useful to humans, it is software for software's sake which is vanity.

Post 1

Well, here it is, blog post number one. I never thought I'd have one, but I keep finding myself subjecting those I work with to tangent after tangent of barely-related thoughts that come flooding out of my brain. I also couldn't resist once I saw clayanderson.blogspot.com was available.

My name is Clay Anderson, I am a software guy who is working to become a people guy. I find software to be an incredible field. There's seldom a definitive "right" or "wrong" solution to any given problem. That is what makes software development an art more than science. However, figuring out people is an even larger problem and one that has even less "rights" and "wrongs". Every individual has different motivations and strengths. It is those differences that I find intriguing and challenging.

My goal is that the content that makes its way out of my brain and into cyberspace is useful and relevant.