[newswasboring]

The goal by Goldratt. I read it last year and it completely changed the way I think about work and life. Once I have figured out the goal, the actual goal, not just deliver the project, stuff like speed up the app by 50% not "implement memorization" I realized nobody cares how I achieve the actual goal. It helps that I work with smart people who also understand this. Unless I am adding to the cost massively (like a few million dollars) all solutions are acceptable.

It also helps massively to figure out the goal first, because most of the time the goal is hidden in management speak or cryptic customer feedback due to language barriers or legal ones.

[Rainymood]

I agree. I got very close to shaving a lot of yaks when I just wanted to write faster blog posts. I wanted to improve my blog writing workflow by seamlessly pasting images from my clipboard to my .md file (which jekyll turns into a blog).

I was on the verge of writing my own plugin for that. Then I took a step back, took a deep breath, and realised that my goal was to write faster blog posts, not to write my own f*cking plugin. So I googled for a bit and found an existing plugin and modified it to my likings, making it do exactly what I wanted to achieve.

Engineers are often too fixated on building, and not explicit enough about what problem they are solving. They just want to build shit because it's fun, but often this is not optimal.

[quickthrower2]

Hi, I would be interested in your approach to speed that app up - send me an email (see my profile) if you want to connect. I am doing a similar thing in a similar way - totally goal oriented -and would love to share notes.