Ghost's Blog

Give Yourself Permission To Suck

Sun, 25 Dec 2022 10:00:00 GMT

Back when I worked in Visa I had my own coach. And one day I was talking to her about wanting to start a Youtube channel. But I worried that I wouldn’t be very good at it.

I didn’t know how to write a script, build an audience, record or edit a video. I felt that because I was a Senior Manager responsible for 4 teams I had to be good at this from the start. It would be embarrassing if I wasn’t.

And she actually told me:

Hey, you’re a Sr. Manager in Visa, you’ve earned that. And it took years to develop the skill to get to this level. You’re not Senior Manager of YouTube videos. Let yourself be a beginner and let yourself suck at it. Just start.

I stopped letting my ego get hurt by the number of views or subscribers.

I measure my success by whether I published, and what new thing I learned from each video.

Those are things I can control.

Since I started I learned how to edit the video to make it more engaging. I learned to find better music. I learned to look at the camera. I learned how to have better audio and lights.

And doing that I also hopefully helped a couple of people.

For more content like this subscribe.

If you want to watch this in video form subscribe to my youtube channel.

The BEST Behavioural Interview Answer I've Seen

Sat, 07 May 2022 10:00:00 GMT

Good behavioural interview answers are rare. Today, I saw one of the best.

Here’s the question:

Give me an example of how you overcame an obstacle in a creative way

You can take a moment and try to answer it for yourself. I’ll wait.

Not easy right?

Most people are used to being told what to do every step of the way. When they get a question like this their mind goes blank.

Let’s call today’s interview candidate Bob. Bob’s mind did not go blank. Bob’s answer was pure genius.

Bob was using Amazon Web Services Data Migration Service (AWS DMS) v2. This kept two databases that were essential for his company’s product in sync. Everything worked and life was good.

Until one day AWS came out with version 3. Bob’s company tried moving to v3 and it failed. It appeared AWS had a bug. Bob’s company tried to get AWS’s attention to get this fixed. Unfortunately they were too small and were ignored.

AWS decided to move everyone to v3. DMS has a maintenance window every week and clients can set the day and time.

AWS set it so that DMS was automatically updated in the next maintenance window. This would break Bob’s product!

So Bob wrote a script that moved the maintenance window every week before it executed. Let’s say the maintenance window was on Monday. On Sunday the script would move it to Saturday. Then before Saturday rolled around it would move it back to Monday. It was always in the future and the update would never happen.

The cherry on top of this f*ck you cake is that he used AWS lambda to run the job that messed with AWSs plan 😂

At some point AWS reaches out to Bob saying:

hey, you are the last client using v2 and we want to sunset this thing!

Bob finally got their attention and AWS was able to confirm and fix the bug.

Bob lived happily every after. The End.

There are a couple of reasons I love this answer. It shows creativity and pragmatism. It also shows good communication to explain this clearly and concisely. But above all it shows ownership and grit. Bob had all the excuses in the world to let the product break:

AWS was rolling out an update outside of his control.
DMS had a bug.
AWS was not responsive to fixing the bug.

These are damn good excuses. And he did not let it stop him.

I hired him. Wouldn’t you?

For more content like this follow and/or subscribe to my newsletter bellow.

The Pandemic Gym

Fri, 18 Mar 2022 10:00:00 GMT

Months ago, when we were in the middle of the pandemic I was feeling restless. I have a habit of lifting weights and I couldn’t because the government closed the gyms.

Because I’m so used to working out and I like getting stronger and fitter this affected my mood. I started gaining weight, I lost muscle, I was feeling unhealthy and my self esteem took a hit as well.

I tried working out with my body weight but I didn’t enjoy it and it was a struggle to push myself to do it. I find it much harder to push myself with harder exercises when I don’t have weights.

Then this idea hit me. I could replicate my gym environment at home. There are a few lifting exercises that are the most important ones, and if I could do those I’d be in good shape.

At first it was hard. Because so many people were facing the same issue gym equipment sold out. I setup notifications for when items are back in stock. I bought some items from decathlon and others from my local ebay.

Step by step I built my home gym.

I started using it everyday. I’m stronger than ever, I beat all my previous personal records.

You can see my progress and much higher workout consistency after building the home gym in January 2021.

Because I’m doing home office I can now workout during lunch time.

The gyms reopened but I’m going to keep my home gym because it allows me to workout much more consistently. In the past, if a day was full of meetings or I had an event I would end up running out of time and not working out. Now I can always squeeze in a shorter workout.

So think about what gifts an adversity like the pandemic can give you. You get to rethink and redesign your life. You can actually come out the other end better and stronger.

How to Productively Watch Videos

Sat, 25 Dec 2021 10:00:00 GMT

Let me show you how I watch educational videos productively with this simple and powerful technique. I use a chrome extension to control the speed on any video. Also I don’t use the mouse to control the speed, I use keyboard shortcuts.

Bootstrapping Productivity

Mon, 29 Nov 2021 10:00:00 GMT

I’ve been reading and experimenting with productivity for over a decade. In this course I’ll teach some of my best productivity techniques and tools that you can apply immediately.

Watch my course with a free trial over on Skillshare.

Double Your Programming Productivity

Sun, 28 Nov 2021 10:00:00 GMT

Watch my course with a free trial over on Skillshare.

You are wasting time every day! Most developers are missing the techniques to make their job faster and easier everyday. It is no wonder. Universities don’t teach this and, more often than not, your more experienced colleagues guide you the wrong way.

Do you navigate your application files with a mouse? Are you using print to debug? Are you not making full use of your IDE’s capabilities? Do you find yourself repeatedly writing boilerplate code? Do you type long commands in the terminal? Do you refactor code by hand? If any of this describes your current state and you would like to learn a better way you’ve come to the right place.

In this course you will learn skills that will increase your programming productivity.

In this course you will learn to:

Efficiently navigate your source code
Use debugging tools
Navigate code efficiently
Create command-line shortcuts with aliases
Create reusable snippets

And much more…

This course is most useful for beginners and intermediate developers. But even experienced developers can learn something new.

I would be grateful if you leave a review or feedback. This helps me create better content for you.Thank you!

The Straightforward Guide to Investing

Sat, 27 Nov 2021 10:00:00 GMT

Watch my course with a free trial over on Skillshare.

Here is a course that might change some people’s lives forever. We’re all procrastinating on somethings that can make a huge difference in our quality of life and we know it.

If you don’t learn to invest your default situation is to lose money. You’ll let your money sit in the bank and lose value or you’ll make bad investment decisions that will cost you.

It doesn’t need to be that way. The principles of passive investing are super easy. You’re not gambling, you’re not trying to outsmart everyone else, you’re not trying to beat the market, you’re following a simple idea of investing in the whole market at a low cost.

In this course you’ll learn:

what happens to your money over time
the principles of a passive investment portfolio
whether you’d be best served by investing all at once (lump-sum) or periodically (dollar-cost averaging)
whether timing the market is a good idea or not and why (hint: it’s not a good idea)

Among many other things.

Let’s get started!

Note: Don’t take this as investment advice. I’m not a financial advisor.

Disclaimer: This information is for educational and entertainment purposes only. This does not represent, in any case, specific investment, legal nor tax advice nor recommendations to purchase a particular financial product.

The content does not represent, in any case, specific investment, legal, tax advice nor recommendations to purchase a particular financial product. They have been taken from publicly available sources to the best of our knowledge and belief. All information provided (all thoughts, comments, hints, etc.) are for educational and private entertainment purposes only. Nevertheless, no liability can be assumed for the correctness in each individual case. Should visitors to this site make any of the offered contents their own or follow any advice, they explicitly act on their own responsibility.

How to Doodle when you can't Draw

Fri, 26 Nov 2021 10:00:00 GMT

Watch my course with a free trial over on Skillshare.

Do you want to learn how to doodle but you are terrible at drawing? Do you want to get started right away and see results fast? Do you want to learn to sketch simple images that convey information and not necessarily draw the next mona lisa? Then this course is for you!

There are a handful of techniques that will help you go from a bad doodler to a better one. I’ll walk you through the 20% you need learn and practice to get 80% of the benefit.

You’ll learn how to:

build your own vocabulary of sketches
the importance of the first line
the advantages of learning and producing digitally and the equipment you need

And more! Let’s get started!