On what makes you, you.

This is a bit off topic. Or maybe not. When it comes to agility, we are addressing psychology, sociology, and anthropology. Mind you, I am talking about agility, not Agile. And, as mentioned in previous articles, we are all born with the sense of agility. It's what made the human race thrive above all others. It's what makes nature evolve em survive in a planet where we, the alphas, constantly destroy and remodel everything to our whim. But what is it that makes some of us "more agile" than others?

In a nutshell, environment. Which basically is the same as saying everything, and everyone. By now you want me to elaborate. OK...

Let's use some linear algebra analogy. Each individual, human or not, goes through life like a vector. As you probably know, in simple terms, a vector has a direction and it's represented by a direct line segment going from point A to point B. If undisturbed, the vector stays the same indefinitely. Same length, same direction. What if we encounter another vector? Depending on its direction and length, we may be influenced more or less but in the end we always end up changing something about ourselves. The sum of two vectors usually means a new vector appear, the direction being an average of both the initial vectors direction and strength/length. Some vectors impact other negatively. Some impact positively. But always they have some sort of interaction that will impact them both. Mathematicians, please step in at any time. Just be gentle as I haven't dabbled with vectors for more than 40 years...

Overall what I am trying to say is that everything and everyone impacts everything and everyone around them. To what degree, it's anyone's guess. I am sure somewhere there must exist some study on this. If you know it, feel free to share. But I don't know. What I know is to what is my recollection about key moments of my own life and how those have impacted my personal and professional path. And I want to share some of those key moments with you so that you can think about how seemingly random they may occur and how completely out of the blue they may appear.

Let's start with my first career and everlasting passion with photography. When I was 13 years old I went to spend a couple of weeks in Brazil to go and meet Mauricio de Sousa - a famous cartoon artist. My aunt was a journalist and had some connections over there. Long story short, I spend a couple of weeks in Brazil, the first in S?o Paulo, and the second in a small coastal town called Itanhaém. By that week my aunt had still some work to do and so, in order to keep me busy, she handed me her camera - a Pentax ME Super with a 50mm lens - and explained to me the basic operation between diaphragm aperture and speed, and also what were the basis around film sensitivity. And I spent a week snapping away. I was planning to become an architect or designer, but from that moment onwards I knew I wanted to work with photography. I came back and immediately started badgering my mother to buy me a camera. I looked for photography schools. No "oficial" and recognized courses existed. I didn't care. I went to the Portuguese Institute of Photography and after to AR.CO. Soon after I had my first exhibition. And the first assignments appeared. This lead to a good career in photography, publishing in some magazines, having multiple exhibitions, and meeting some of my idols - Sebasti?o Salgado was the biggest name I had the pleasure to know personally and had a small but fruitful conversation about photography and his work.

Until we arrive to 1996 when I was doing a photography work in a place that basically served as a building for college students open 24/7 with one of the first cyber rooms available. And I logged in for the first time in my life. I realised I could post my photos and have them displayed to everyone around the globe. But how could I do it? I became a self taught web developer. And what do you know? My girlfriend's father worked for a governmental agency who was hiring tech people. My girlfriend wanted me to have a more steady and regular job, so I went for it. Suddenly I am managing the web project for this governmental agency. And then I was developing the first ever online radio in Portugal. And after I had my first taste in project management and fell in love with it as well. And in 2009 as I was working in the biggest media company in Portugal of the time I went to a Scrum workshop! Wow! The rest is history (I'll leave it for another post).

In conclusion, no matter what you plan for your life, it will change. What you are today was impacted by events, people, places, the environment. And it will continue to be that way until the day we breathe our last breath. And if we know and live with this reality every single day, why don't we realize this to happen the same exact way with our projects? Think about it.

What makes you, you, is everything, everyone, all the time. You may influence somethings, sometime, when you are the biggest vector. Other times, the opposite happens. Learn this. Apply it to you personal and professional life, and use this as a northstar. And be happy. Thank you.