Anything and Everything

(Adopted from our team's weekly blog)

Suzanne Evans has a great little quote (and a not-so-little book based off of it):

“The way you do anything is the way you do everything.”

The way you respond to emails, the way you manage your time, the way you make trade-offs between elegance and practicality in engineering decisions, etc.

Here are some of the ways that I’m attempting to do anything and everything:

• Intentionally. No auto-piloting or knee-jerking. I want to be intentional in everything from my choice of words when speaking with team members to my naming conventions when creating a variable.
• Strategically. A close cousin to intentionality, I want to be strategic in how I handle things. Will what I’m doing or saying be effective? Will it add value? Will it move something forward? Or is it haphazard and hopeful? I don’t want to spray and pray my way through life.
• Creatively. There is usually a gap between the first way I could do something and the most optimal way I could do something. The space between is where creativity comes in. Think about it twice, think about it upside down, think about it in a fresh way.
• Slowly. I err towards speed. This metric may be the opposite for you. Perhaps you lean into slowness and should work on doing things at a greater clip. For me, though, it’s slowness. I need to give everything a chance to breathe before pulling the trigger. As I say that, I’m reminded of some of the cues that sharp shooters have related to their breath and squeezing (slow, paced), not pulling (yanking quickly), the trigger. Aim small miss small bruh.

All of the little things matters because the way we handle them become the way we handle big things. Our responses (or non-responses!) build habits. Those habits become a sort of muscle memory that comes out reflexively.

The good news is that the way you change how you do anything will help change the way you do everything. So, if you don’t like how you do something, then work on changing it. One choice, one action at a time.

The only way to respond and act the way you want to without thinking is to respond and act the way you wan to by thinking.

What are some ways you are wanting to shift how you approach things? Share your thoughts with in the comments.