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The watercooler for ideas, opinions, and fun topics as it relates to product, design, and engineering in the world of software...and maybe more. Guess we will find out!
My wife's.
My wife, Allie is a kindergarten teacher.
If you don't know.
Uh, like an incredible
kindergarten teacher.
She's also an incredible mom and an
incredible wife, but the, the teacher part
is important because that's the context.
Loosely.
That got me thinking about, uh,
what I wanted to talk about today.
We have a unique schedule.
We've got three kids under five.
And when it's summertime.
Everyone is home.
Like everyone.
I love being involved.
It's like the best part.
I love summertime with
everyone being home.
I get to take breaks from
work, um, for lunchtimes.
Uh, but with a baby and a two
year old who decided this summer
to find their terrible, um,
I was involved a lot more in.
With, you know, three kids under five.
It seems that like every single one of my.
Uh, summers recently have had, had
to be very involved, which I love.
I love doing, let me make
sure that that is very clear.
This is not a complaint
on my summer schedule.
It is just the setup for, uh,
the fact that my work schedule
gets choppier in the summer.
It's the, the beauty of
being a remote worker.
Uh, getting to do my time at any time
I want during the day, as long as
I'm continuing to get my work done.
But what that means is I stay very
focused on the most important tasks
when I am at my desk, because I
know I've only got a couple of.
Good work chunks.
Uh, throughout a day.
But this week marks the first week
that everyone is back at school.
Um, my wife and our
oldest are back at school.
She's in kindergarten this year.
Uh, and I dropped the two youngest
off at my mother-in-law's and I
have what feels like after getting
back home, nothing but time.
Like the whole day is ahead of me.
And for the first week, um,
you get back that first day.
And it.
It feels crazy.
Like I get an entire, an entire
week of summer work done in
like the first day or two.
Uh, but as August changes to September
and September changes to October.
That feeling changes my dedication
to the most important tasks fade.
Uh, with all the time that I have,
and I'm still doing a lot of work,
but not all of it is focused in the
same way that it is over the summer.
And last summer, I heard a saying that
really kind of struck a chord with.
With this thought.
You're just a squirrel prying at rocks.
That's what we're going
to talk about today.
I'm Wil king and this is
episode two of strong opinions.
Weakly held.
Let's do it.
Okay.
What, so what does that mean?
I just like threw that
in there at the end.
Squirrel prying at rocks.
Uh, If you haven't heard this one before.
Uh, when a squirrel is prying,
what are they trying to do?
They're trying to find food.
Actually Allie.
Allie.
And I, a couple of weeks ago saw
this squirrel with the longest tail.
I think I've ever seen, like, it was
truly absurd how long the tail was.
And it was running around the
yard, picking up acorns in,
prying them open, and then just
shoving it in it's a little mouth.
And then going onto the next one.
So I'm sure you, you figured it out that.
And when the rest of the saying goes
on to say, you're just a squirrel
prying at rocks, hoping to find nuts.
The idea here is the
futility of the squirrel.
Who's doing all of this
work prying at a rock.
When there's nothing to find.
So, let me tell ya.
I have pride.
At a lot of rocks, honestly, a true,
truly staggering amount of looking back.
And this saying is framed as a
negative a lot of times, but there
were also times in my life where
prying at rocks was valuable.
So today let's dig into.
To two ways that you
can be praying at rocks.
One that is.
Not always, like it's always feudal
in the end in the sense that,
like, you never find what you were
looking for during doing the task.
Um, But there's two different ways that
you can go about it, where one provides
a value for you and the other one.
Doesn't and we need to avoid it.
Um, For my experience.
So the first one we're going
to dig into is the one that
can sometimes provide value.
So there's this time when you can
be praying at rocks where you're
unaware that that's what you're doing.
You think that you're doing something
that you're going to find food out of that
you're going to find success or like a
result out of a, and you're going at it.
Uh, just go into town on that
rock, but, uh, thinking it's
the whole time, but it's not.
And.
The, the times that I did
this, I genuinely believed.
That what I had in my hands was a nut
only to discover that it was rock.
Now.
Aye.
Can think of a few examples where
this was a case, the case where
I still found value from it.
Um, even though it didn't turn out the
way that I expected it to, um, the value
that I found from doing this was, was.
Tangentially great as well.
So the first.
The first of these, uh, there's like,
I will say there's a few different like
topics, um, that kind of fall under this.
So one of them is, um, Building
a tool that nobody wants.
So this is.
This is the one that I've run into.
Uh, more times than I care to count.
Um, but as a builder, This is definitely
the most common rock that, that I, and
I'm going to assume a lot of you fall
for, it's always disappointing when you
realize that you've found a rock, but.
Um, let me share some of the
valuable things that I, I got out of.
Finding rocks when trying to
build something that indeed.
It ended up nobody wanted so one.
I got better at building products.
Um, and I also got better at figuring
out when something was Iraq sooner.
So my friend.
And one example that I'll share
with this is there was this, um, my
very first JavaScript library that
I wrote, uh, and it was called salad
bar and I was writing this back, uh,
when I first started development.
I worked in a WordPress.
Uh, we were an educational company
called Skillcrush and everything
we wrote was in vanilla JavaScript.
Uh, and I was just getting so tired of
trying to go and do Dom access manually.
And so what I wrote was, um, a
function I'd gotten super down
the functional, uh, rabbit hole.
And so I wrote a functional
library for how to.
Use a bunch of functional
helpers to pull Dom elements out.
Um, run operations on those
elements all in a way that was, um,
A very like functional approach.
Uh, it was kinda, it was like Alpine,
uh, before there was Alpine, uh, and
roughly like a million times worse.
So.
Needless to say I was the only
one that enjoyed using it.
And after releasing it and making
the super fun logo for it, I realized
that what I was holding was a rock.
Um, but.
For me, this was like huge.
This was like a huge learning experience.
Uh, I was able to think through API APIs.
Uh, for the first time in the sense that
like other people would be using it.
I was the only like developer
at the time, uh, at the company.
So I was writing it and I was using it.
And so everything that I wrote made sense
to me, but when I tried to write it.
For external consumption.
I had to think through API design
that anyone could understand.
Now I probably would have learned a lot
more of people used it and learned the
ways in which that still wasn't successful
in my API design, but it was definitely
like this mindset that I then got into,
which was like, how would others use this?
Like, what is the right.
Uh, way to present.
The API for something that I'm
writing, um, And the other one was
how to document and communicate.
The, uh, mental model around writing code.
So.
It's not enough to just say
like, Hey, here's the API use it.
Uh, for this library because.
People needed to be convinced
why they needed this.
And like, why did I go take the
approach that I did and what
the value was in doing that?
So I got a lot of experience
thinking through like, well,
why would I do it this way?
What's the value in it?
What are the pros?
What are the cons?
And why do I think the
pros outweigh the cons?
That was such a valuable experience
But that was just one of many
times that I pried at rocks.
The, the other ones all
taught me different things.
Uh, you know, I would do something that
would really level up my design ability
that actually happened this year.
Um, I applied, uh, for a job role, uh,
for tailwind and applying for the job
made me think, wow, I really, I really
got this influx of like, um, imposter
syndrome, which really sent me down this
rabbit hole of getting better at design.
I redesigned my home page, my, my whole
website, uh, did a lot of work doing that,
that I didn't end up getting the job.
Uh, but I got a lot of improved personal
improvement by, by trying to pry.
Um, so, I would, I actually owe
my career, my current career path
to prying at a rock because I had
this, um, podcast surprise got it.
I had another one before this one.
Um, that was about the, the elm front
end language surprise again, functional.
Uh, if you don't see a trend there,
I've since then moved away, but
I'm not going to digress now.
Uh, but, uh, I did this whole season, uh,
interviewing people from the Elm community
about, uh, text editors, because I was
wanting to build a text editor in Elm.
And that was a whole lot of fun.
I learned a whole lot, uh, built a
lot of connections and relationships
from that, even though, uh, I
didn't continue on with the podcast.
It wasn't like the podcast brought
me some like incredible amount of
podcast related success or anything.
Uh, but the job that I got after.
working at the WordPress company,
um, only came for two reasons.
One, because I did the podcast, they
heard about the podcast and they were
like, wow, like he has a lot of passion
and dedication to learning something
that is not part of his current role.
And he seems to be very
knowledgeable about it.
That got them interested in me.
Uh, that set me apart from other
people that could take the role.
The other one is that, um, My current
role is in WordPress, but I had
started doing a bunch of products and
projects in react that went nowhere.
Like all of them, all
of them went nowhere.
Uh, but through that
process, I learned react.
I learned, uh, that whole environment
in the, got into that community
and the next job, which was, uh, a
React job was only possible because
I now had all this knowledge from
building things that didn't work.
So there's this whole category of
things that you can learn from prying
at rocks when you're doing it, not aware
that what you are prying at is a rock.
You, uh, I wrote three bullet points
down, uh, that I think kind of capture
a lot of this, which is when you
learn how to identify rocks sooner.
Um, I don't spend as much time on
things that are going nowhere as I
did before, because I can identify.
Sometimes before I start, whether what I'm
going to work on is worth working on it or
not, and I can make a decision of, okay,
do I want to do this to learn something?
So now, like, my, uh, my,
like, decision making process.
formulas different.
I'm not going at it and then disappointed
on the other end of it because I
didn't achieve what I thought I would.
Um, I can categorize those as like,
okay, this isn't because I think it's
going to find success in this way.
I will find success by like
learning something new, maybe
meeting some new people by building
something fun or something cool.
You identify rocks sooner, too.
You learn skills that can only
come from getting in reps.
Reps and skills, uh, is like a
whole topic, uh, that I'm sure
I will expound upon a lot more
in future episodes, uh, of this.
But you can only master a skill
through repetition of doing it.
There's no amount of reading about
something or studying something,
uh, that will make you better.
master it.
You can only find sharp edges and
gaps in your knowledge by trying to
apply the theory that you have, you
have been studying and learning.
Uh, so that a lot of times comes
at, in the form of prying at rocks.
Uh, you get reps and you level up
those skills and get better at them.
Then the, the final one, which is, uh,
Was, uh, kind of like a side note as
part of like the, the, the podcast path,
uh, story that I told earlier was that
you build connections and relationships,
uh, sharing what you're doing, even if
it leads nowhere, uh, from a success
perspective, financially, um, just by
sharing things that you're doing and
being public with that and working on,
on things that are fun or cool and,
you know, you, you find connections
and relationships through that process.
Um, it's like my favorite part of, of
building things and working on things is,
is that, uh, process of like, Building
a network, building relationships, uh,
my career, uh, a lot of the fun projects
and exciting things that I've have found
success in, in my career came from working
on something that was not successful
or was never going to be successful,
but was interesting and fun and caught
attention, uh, of people, uh, that allowed
me to, uh, to jump into projects and
roles that I wouldn't have had otherwise.
So that kind of, that kind of wraps
up the, this topic of like unaware,
prying at rocks that can be valuable at
times because you learn something from
it and you weren't intentionally doing
it, which leads us to the other type of
prying at rocks that is not valuable.
Uh, and that is a lot of times something
that you can get, uh, get sucked down
into the bhagav, which is when you
know that you're prying on a rock.
Um, when we're prying on rocks and we know
that what we're doing is a rock, a lot
of times we will make excuses to ourself.
We will tell ourselves
that this isn't a rock.
This is a big old juicy nut.
Um, this is valuable.
This is something that is
important to be worked on.
I have to do this.
When a lot of times what, What's
happening is, like, I'm telling
myself, Well, this is valuable to
avoid this other difficult thing.
Like, I need to get these, these,
oh, I can get these done quick.
Let me do these three things, and
this goes back to how August turns
into September and turns into October,
where I didn't have a lot of time.
And so I knew I had to focus
on the important things, even
if they were hard things.
But the more time that I had to work
on things, the easier it was to, to
keep doing things, to be busy, but not
to be working on the important things.
To pry on, on rocks, as it were.
To waste my time away doing things
that I knew were not the most
important thing to be working on.
Uh, they were not even the thing that
was, uh, some of these other items
where it's like, Oh yeah, like I'll get.
I'll learn something from this or
I'll like get reps in a new skill and
build connections and relationships.
Like, no, those, these are like the,
these are like the tasks of like, uh, I
think a lot of bootstrappers, um, people
building products will, we'll get this
where you know that The app that you're
building has this pain point with maybe
it's like activation or onboarding.
And you know that like the problem is,
is they just don't get understand X.
So what you really need to
do is you need to spend time
planning, thinking, designing, uh,
developing on this area of the app.
But that's really hard.
Like, I don't understand
why, uh, people don't get it.
Uh, I might need to talk to
users to understand that.
I don't really want to talk to people.
Oh, but you know, like this, like people
really wanted dark, dark, uh, sorry, I
had to drop that one in there or like,
Or like invoices, you
know, like billing things.
Things that seem valuable, but are not.
Actually valuable to the problem
at hand, there is a, an important
thing that you could be working on.
But instead of working
on the important thing.
What you're doing is going up and
gathering up all these little rocks,
these things that feel valuable.
Uh, putting them in your little bag.
Of valuable items.
And then that bag is going to sink
you and sink your product because
you're holding a bag of rocks instead
of a bag of actually valuable.
Uh, things that you've
spent time on and collected.
So.
Uh, that is the.
That's the idea you, you pry at rocks.
You waste time.
Uh, and when you're not
aware of it, sometimes.
You're not doing it on purpose
and it may waste some time.
Uh, but it can sharpen your skills.
It can, uh, help you learn
to identify rock sooner.
Um, because you weren't aware of what
it looked like in the first place.
And at times you can build
connections and relationships.
By working on, on projects that may
not have any long-term financial value.
Uh, directly from them.
But then there's the
flip side of the coin.
Where, you know what you're doing,
you know, that there's an important
thing that you're working on.
And, uh, as August turns into September
in September, turns into October.
Um, the more time that you have
the easier it is to try and
avoid the important things.
Um, It takes discipline.
Uh, and that's not always easy.
There's the, you don't always feel
like being disciplined and like
sometimes just go pry at some rocks.
Like if you need to go pray at a rock.
Um, Go prior to rock.
Sometimes it's okay.
But when you realize you've only
been prying at rocks and you've
got no food and winter comes.
Uh, you're going to be in trouble.
So.
That's that's the extent that I'm
going to push this metaphor, this idea.
Uh, but I want to hear
your thoughts about it.
I'd love to hear stories of
times that you've pried it rocks.
I'd love to hear of the times
that they turned out great in the
times that they might not have.
And you realize you're just wasting time.
But there's there are,
there are times out there.