The Pragmatic’s Guide to Technology — Vincenz Lachner
Navigating the Temporal Domain | Part 1
Working in an ever-changing industry that evolves at a pace that only seems to keep accelerating, us humans need to find ways to adapt. Luckily that’s all we’ve done for the last thousand years.
A key part of adapting is being able to have insightful introspection of our own limitations and strengths. If we trace our personal strategy without exploring the blind spots of our self perception, we are destined to hours of frustration and overwork.
In my case, and of most humans, it’s embracing our own mortality, acknowledging our existence bound to the temporal domain. And before you eject your seat after reading that last line, stay with me, this is less philosophical than it seems.
I’ve always been extremely curious in nature. Coupled with a really wide spectrum of interests, it almost seems obvious to find myself asking:
Why can’t I find time for this?
Proficiency takes time, mastery takes a lot of time. It’s easy to get carried away in the drawing board perfecting your technique, but more often than not we are better off diving straight to the pool. Especially if there’s someone crying for help from the deep end.
Ok, but what does this have to do with technology?
In short, everything. Staying up to date with technology is very time-consuming. You might find your self after months of harnessing a technology uncovering hundreds of articles and experts speculating its inevitable obsolescence. An environment riddled with trends, speculation and uncertainty is a less than ideal condition to embark in a learning journey. Yet we set sail.
Today marks the 30-day milestone of my software apprenticeship at Pernix. Working in very diverse projects. But whether it is developing for commercial clients or technology focused on social and environmental impact. Some lessons hold true across the board:
Focus on the impact, not in the technology.
Driven by this principle you’ll find yourself researching less which are the latest and more trendy technologies, and listening more to people and their stories. The drive behind your research should always be focused on how to better impact those stories. Technology must serve, we must not serve technology.
