Why copy-paste is worse than spending time on coding

Some weeks ago I learnt one important lesson: sometimes, saving time is worse than learning a tiny bit of new.
That's complicated, I know. I'll explain...

Today I faced a task of transferring one 44 lines long and 2 columns wide Excel table into an XML format.
If you are related to IT in any way, I am sure, you've had such a challenge at least once in your work.
I had a choice:

1. create one entry in XML manually, copy-paste 44 of them and then change the values inside by copy-pasting them from the Excel table - dumb but familiar and simple OR
2. write a formula in Excel once to create an XML entry automatically, then drag it down to the end of the table, and copy-past the whole table into the XML file - unknown and difficult.

First option was easy AND quick. I am quick at typing and switching between windows.

Second option MIGHT be slower, and not so easy. It has an initial investment of time and brains to quickly produce results later. What's also important is that if the original data gets changed, I just need to copy-paste the new "2 columns" and my formula will recreate the XML.

My first intention was to use option nr. 1. This is a one time task, probably, next time if I have to do it I will have to write another formula, so what I DO now is not that reusable etc. But then it occured to me that the result of the DOING might not be reusable, but the result of LEARNING is definitely reusable.

Now, several weeks in the future, I can tell that I have used this small but very useful newly acquired skill several times by now, and getting better and quicker at it every time I do it.

So, next time you want to quickly do it the easy and familiar way, stop and think for a second - will it be worth spending some extra minutes on the task and do it a new way, learning something new on the way?

Do Something Now

These days I have a CD in my car playing, among other songs, Nickelback's "When we stand together". I started by liking the music, which inspires a certain mood in me, a mood to do something, and as it often is, the music doesn't go alone. When I started understanding the words, they inspired me even more.

Has it ever happened to you that you see a beggar or a person in despair, but are so busy with your thoughts or plans that you simply pass by?

Does it happen to you that you watch the evening news with the report from battlefields, indignant at the government and crazy extremists, then turn the TV off, and go on about your daily routine without remembering even where it was?

How often do you throw away food leftovers from your table? 

How often do you throw away unopened food you bought but never ate?

Have you ever thought of doing something beyond fulfilling your own needs to help someone who cannot help him/herself? If you did, I believe sometimes you gave up just because you couldn't do much alone, and noone was there to support you or join you. I feel it myself sometimes.

                                                             
                                                                 
                                                                     NICKELBACK
                                                       "When We Stand Together"

One more depending on a prayer
And we all look away
People pretending everywhere
It's just another day
There's bullets flying through the air
And they still carry on
We watch it happen over there
And then just turn it off

We must stand together
There's no giving in
Hand in hand forever
That's when we all win

They tell us everything's alright
And we just go along
How can we fall asleep at night
When something's clearly wrong
When we could feed a starving world
With what we throw away
But all we serve are empty words
That always taste the same

The right thing to guide us
Is right here inside us
No one can divide us
When the light is nearly gone
But just like a heartbeat
The drumbeat carries on
And the drumbeat carries on
Just like a heart beat

Express yourself

Yesterday I visited my friend, who is a mother of two kids: a 7yo boy and a 1yo girl. As it usually happens, visiting a friend with a baby turns into participating in babysitting and house-holding during the visit, so I took part in playing games and a delicate process of bathing. In the bath there was a toy volcano, which you could fill with a bath foam and imitate eruption by pressing a secret rubber pump on the side. The delight on baby's face, when the volcano suddenly erupted with foam was absolutely limitless. Her eyes and smile went wide, she breathed in with a sound of amazement - "aaaaahhhhh!" and her hands went dancing in the air, followed by legs and head - she was all happiness. When the eruption ceased (Mom's hand was tired), smile and eyes became curious, and when it continued, the amazement returned.

It made me thinking how different we are -  a 1yo kid and a 30-something women. We are actually also delighted and amazed, but  do we show it? Nope, or in a very "limited edition". A polite smile, a quiet "wow!" or "hmmm" is all we produce. Most of us lose our ability to be amazed or delighted somewhere in the teen age. Not many adult people sincerely express their delight at the sight of the magnificent mountains or feeling of love and serenity in the quiet and silent forest paradise next to a small flowing river.

What about pain? How often do we express ourselves when we fell pain? When we feel hurt and stressed out, or just plain simple physical pain? It becomes less and less appropriate in our culture to express feelings, even in the family, at home. Even alone.

We don't even express ourselves during sex, which is one of the most spontaneous, pleasant and relaxing activities at all! We are proud by our ability to be strong and suppress our emotions which is often mistaken for controlling them. We forget how to relax, laugh, cry, be delighted, sad or angry.

“It is a grave injustice to a child or adult to insist that they stop crying. One can comfort a person who is crying which enables him to relax and makes further crying unnecessary; but to humiliate a crying child is to increase his pain, and augment his rigidity. We stop other people from crying because we cannot stand the sounds and movements of their bodies. It threatens our own rigidity. It induces similar feelings in ourselves which we dare not express and it evokes a resonance in our own bodies which we resist.” ― Alexander Lowen, The Voice of the Body

Showing emotions and expressing feelings is expressing ourselves as human. Being human and accepting ourselves in our humanity (including the whole range of emotions we might have) helps to build strong relationships, cooperate, lead people, do business, accomplish big projects, raise kids, and most of all - be content with our life and be happy.

I am not saying we should express every emotion as it comes with all its might in any given place and situation. That would indeed be inadequate, but we should understand what we feel and let ourselves express the feeling arisen, either by talking about it sincerely or just allowing it to be, later, in a comfortable environment where it won't hurt other people.

Don't be shy to express happiness and delight as they come! There is no better sight than a sight of a person, amazed, delighted or simply happy and cheerful. It is contagious too, which means that by being happy and showing it you are actually making people around you happier.

Stop trying to impress others. Express yourself.

Experience

"One of the few things worth having in life is experience." 

I realized this driving one morning to work. The day promised to be busy and difficult, and my stomach sometimes tied to a knot anticipating difficult discussions and some unpleasant tasks. I didn't sleep enough hours some nights before and dreamt about Saturday morning just to sleep at the same time knowing well that I will also have to work on Saturday. The ongoing project I am managing is very challenging, and some of my character traits make it even more difficult for me.

Being quite a materialist myself, loving comfort and nice things, I thought that it is possible to have less stressful and challenging work for the same money, still have the same things in my life, but with less efforts and difficulties....

Thinking all that and turning to the office building I suddenly realized that indeed I might HAVE the same things in life - stuff, car, salary, travels etc. What I will lose is EXPERIENCE. This project from the very beginning was a very interesting experience - starting from the content and ending with all the psychological challenges I had to come through personally. And if I hadn't had it, I would have missed a TASTE of life, a very important piece of my living story, piece that made me who I am today, me, whom I accept and love more than I used to. No stuff would ever give me this feeling.

I realized that having lived and living through situations, fears, successes and failures, having experienced and still experiencing them gives my life much more color and taste than anything else. So, I urge you to HAVE not things in our lives, but experience.

"The best things in life aren't things." Buchwald, Art