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- Issue #3 - Chris Shennan's Newsletter
Welcome to issue 3 of my newsletter and the ramblings of a wannabe #indiehacker.
In this issue, I’m going to cover
The “Scotty” Principle
Side Projects - Current
The "Scotty" Principle
Everyone has their own way of working, a pattern or method that works for them and today I wanted to share mine with you. I’ve dubbed it the “Scotty” principle and it has served me well for as far back as I can recall.
So, what is the “Scotty” principle?
Scotty is well known for performing miracles - completing repairs in record time, squeezing the last bit of performance out of the engines, being able to do the impossible and the “Scotty” principle can let you do the same.
It is an approach that consists of 80% doing “what needs to be done” and 20% doing “what I want to do”.
In the interests of warding off any potential disciplinaries or harming future employment opportunities, it is worth noting that when I apply the 20% “what I want to do” it is still within the context of my role and it is not a way for me to skive, put my feet up and watch Netflix when I’m supposed to be working.
So, what does the “Scotty” principle look like?
It can take on a couple of different looks depending on the circumstances
Scenario 1: New Job
When you have just started a new job you can find yourself with a lot of spare time i.e. you have completed your allocated tasks but the team is not immediately available to provide you with your next task and bring you up to speed.
This is a great opportunity to implement the 20% “what you want to do” and see how you can contribute. Pay close attention during the standups, to conversations over the water cooler, review current processes, and listen for pain points - often there are things you can help with that an established team can’t because they’ve been deemed “low priority”.
Scenario 2: Applying a “reset”
How many times have you spent a day bashing your head against a brick wall with a problem only to do something else and the answer presents itself to you within half an hour?
Change is good! Working day-in-day-out on the same thing can wear you down and a small task to allow you to “reset” can boost your motivation.
The “Scotty” principle in practise
As I mentioned in the 1% principle segment last month, progress and achievements, no matter how small, can have a big impact on motivation and the “Scotty” principle fits nicely into that as well. What you are looking for is small tasks that you can isolate, chip away at and will take away a pain point or burden that your users or colleagues are experiencing. These can be things like:-
Are there any slow spots or bottlenecks in the application - is there a database query that could be optimised (indexes, N+1 etc)
Is there a cron task taking ages to run or fails intermittently?
Are there tasks being done manually that can be easily automated?
Are there any changes to the CI/CD pipeline to make it better?
Did you hit any issues with your onboarding? Can you update the documentation so it’s more accurate for the next person?
Are customers complaining about performance issues in a certain part of the application?
I’m sure you can think of a dozen more examples and if you can identify and resolve any of these issues then you could be making massive quality-of-life improvements. If you do this on a regular basis then I’ve no doubt you’ll be regarded as a miracle worker.
But, my employer expects me to work 100% on task X
I don’t think any employer would expect you to work 100% on any task, I certainly wouldn’t. For me, that fits into the same category as being expected to work at peak efficiency for 8 hours a day which isn’t realistic in the best of circumstances, even with the best 80’s montage playlist keeping you pumped.
What they really want is someone that is highly effective at their job and that generally requires knowledge of other areas, different code bases, micro-services, integrations, infrastructure, business knowledge, emerging technologies etc.
If you can branch into these other areas then that will be much more valuable to any employer than rigidly doing exactly as you are instructed, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week - plus that’s no fun for you and will likely lead to an unfriendly working environment.
Think about the career opportunities that have been pitched to you and their job specifications, many of them will include things like
As with many new products, responsibilities will vary frequently. You’ll wear multiple hats, and work across many different technologies, inside many different product domains, and alongside several different teams. We want someone passionate about this type of environment!
You’ll want to stay up to date with the latest developments in the industry and bring fresh ideas and thinking
Ability to guide and influence the way the team works
These all point to the desire for someone who can work effectively in both a team and independently and they are giving you the green light to show how you can provide them with the best value.
Your turn
So that’s it and now you know how I work, but so far it’s been a one-sided conversation. I’d love for you to connect with me (Twitter or LinkedIn) and let me know if you do something similar or have a different approach and how it’s helped you get where you are today.
Side Projects - Current
In last month’s issue, we look at my past side projects so now we can look at my ongoing projects.
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July's Blog Articles
Configure your Symfony application to use TailwindCSS and create beautiful looking applications using pre-built UI components
Estimates for August
Blog Post - Git Merge vs Git Rebase by Example
Thanks
You’ve made it this far so hopefully that means I’m doing something right. I would love you to connect and get in touch with any feedback, questions, ideas, suggestions etc.