It seems that Jessica at TodayWasMeaningful has just posted another brilliantly insightful article, “what you lose when you’re busy“. This article deals with the need to slow down and enjoy individual moments in your life rather than continuously feeling pressured to do things.

I am very familiar with this theme. I have always been goal-oriented myself. After obtaining my first degree, I could not resign myself to live merely for the work routine, so I started a Master’s degree, continued to learn programming on my own time, pursued other software projects, etc. And as the years rolled on, I found that while I was still managing to keep up with my tasks, most of the time I rushed through them, precisely because my time was so limited. The end result was that quality suffered, and that I was unable to complete any spare-time projects I wanted to do, and because of all my commitments, I did not have time to learn technology that would be useful for my career development.

It is surprisingly easy to get addicted to goal-orientedness. You know, I can actually write this article here and now because I took the morning off from work, without having planned to do anything specific this morning. Until very recently, I would never have done that. Any vacation leave I took was booked with specific goals in mind: to travel, to study, to run errands, etc.

Why is idle time such a stigma nowadays? Is it really so terrible to spend the morning listening to the waves, or watching TV, or dusting off the furniture? That same idle time is that which allows you to relax, to recollect your thoughts, and to be creative. It is not hard to imagine why there is so much pressure to do, and to achieve, nowadays. Just think of how many years it will take you to pay off your mortgage, just look at how many requirements are listed on an average software developer vacancy nowadays, look at all the things that are expected of you from your friends, your colleagues, your family, and most of all, yourself. Because although it’s really easy to get addicted to goal-orientedness, it’s also quite easy to break out of it. It’s just a switch, and it’s in your mind.

I want to clarify something here: setting goals is not a bad thing. The bad thing is biting more you can chew, attempting to be too productive without leaving any quality time to yourself; being entirely absorbed in the routine. I think Jessica’s article points this out extremely well:

“i slow down when i’m eating so i can savor the flavor, i try and walk slower so i can see all of the beauty, and i try not to rush.  i do my best to not wish my days away- to trust in the process and appreciate the steps it takes to get there.  because what i know is that i’d hate to reach the destination to find that i’d missed out on the journey.“

And this is something that I think is a big problem in today’s society. Have you ever noticed how the entertainment industry (think computer games, films and music) is mostly producing unoriginal stuff using the same formulas as before, and the quality is constantly getting worse? Have you ever watched a romantic comedy or a disaster movie that actually didn’t use the standard template for its story? And that’s not just limited to the entertainment industry, as Chris Colombo’s article on academic trends illustrates:

“Ironically, the increased pressure and competitiveness on academics, has only served to lower the quality of research – researchers might be busier than ever writing project proposals and reports, supervising students and churning out papers, but the quality, the innovation, and the pioneering elements are slowly being eaten away.”

The constant pressure by large institutions to satisfy the demand is resulting in mediocre, short-sighted work, which is far within the potential of the people who do that work. In a society where money and prestige are vital to survival, and where these may be obtained more easily with mediocre work, there is little reason to stand out. This is just another form of goal-orientedness: neglecting the means to focus on the end is a complete waste of potential.

Someone very close to me used to say:

“What is worth doing, is worth doing well.”

The way I see it, if you’re going to invest a significant amount of effort to do something, then you should take the time you need to do it properly, or do nothing at all. It is better to attempt nothing at all than to waste your time and effort on something meaningless. Failing fast leaves you free to pursue whatever ideas are most appealing at any given time.

So as I explained in the welcome post, I am bidding goodbye to Programmer’s Ranch and starting something afresh with Gigi Labs. Programmer’s Ranch was probably my most successful website so far, and it is a little sad to let it go after slightly less than 18 months.

In life we come across many sad moments, and the demise of a blog is certainly among the least significant of these.  Whether we’re talking about a colleague leaving to pursue a new venture, or a friend who is emigrating, or someone close who just passed away, it is never easy to say goodbye.

There’s a nice conversation from Star Wars which I think contains a few nuggets of wisdom that apply in such cases. Taken from this question, here it goes:

Yoda: “Careful you must be when sensing the future, Anakin! The fear of loss is a path to the Dark Side.”

Anakin: “I won’t let my visions come true, Master Yoda.”

Yoda: “Rejoice for those around us who transform into the Force. Mourn them, do not. Miss them, do not. Attachment leads to jealousy, the shadow of greed, that is.”

Anakin: “What must I do, Master Yoda?”

Yoda: “Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose.”

This advice might sound a little bit brutal, but I think it depends very much on the interpretation. For me, detachment from the things and people that were an important part of our lives does not mean that we don’t care about them. It merely means that we accept that nothing lasts forever. It is for this reason that we make the most of the time we have available with them. And when the time comes to part ways, and for all the time thereafter, we remember and appreciate the part they played in our lives, and the part we played in theirs. Because each one of us has developed into who we are as a result of the interactions we had with others, much like invisible threads.

This also ties in with Buddhist teachings on attachment and liberation:

“The Buddha saw that people’s ignorance of the nature of change was the cause of suffering. We desire to hold on to what we value, and we suffer when life’s inevitable process of change separates us from those things. Liberation from suffering comes, he taught, when we are able to sever our attachments to the transient things of this world.

[…]

“The challenge is not to rid oneself of attachments but, in the words of Nichiren, to become enlightened concerning them. […]

“In their proper perspective–when we can see them clearly and master them rather than being mastered by them–desires and attachments enable us to lead interesting and significant lives.”

So perhaps Yoda will be disappointed to find out that we’ll still miss the people who are no longer a part of our lives. However I think he’d be pretty proud of us if, whenever a friend leaves for greener pastures (whether it means a new job, a new country, or whatever), we know in our heart that we played an important part in his/her personal development, and life in general.