Author: Jason Cox

“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

I confess, I’m a hoarder. I have boxes full of junk that haven’t been visited in over 10 years. There are ancient RCA, S-Video, Coaxial, and even Apple 30-pin iPhone 4 cables, just in case I ever need them again. I have broken electronics and computer parts for the same reason. My nostalgic tendency means I also collect piles of mementos from trips, photos, and even birthday cards. I love physical books and have shelves packed full of them. My digital life is just as bad. In fact, I don’t think I have ever really deleted an app. I collect them like souvenirs. Are any of you like that too?

Clutter. I’m sitting at my desk today in awe of the piles of things around me. Books, magazines, post-it notes, half-completed forms, empty boxes, and some left-over décor from the holidays. I was about to comment on the several coffee mugs sitting on the desk, but that isn’t clutter, that is essential equipment for survival. But still, so much clutter.

My mind is full too. I have to-do lists, incomplete thoughts, spurious worries about implausible events, un-actionable regrets, doubts, and a collection of unhelpful grudges in the corner. My mind is full. Time to relive that embarrassing moment? Worry about something? Think about something you can’t take any action on right now? You might have forgotten it or left something behind, time to worry about it. My mind keeps sorting the useless junk, going back and forth, wondering if it can collect more. It’s like trains of thoughts going in circles. Stop! 

The mental clutter is a bit noisy at times, isn’t it? It can be overwhelming. Do you ever have that? If so, it’s time to clean house. Yes, it’s time for some Marie Kondo magic of tidying up. Go through the clutter… Start with what is around you. What can be tossed. What needs to be kept? Start with what is in reach in front of you. As the haze clears, expand to the office area or room you are in. Be careful, it may get away from you! Don’t try to do it all. After all, we still need to visit the most important place of all. The mind palace. Those trains in your mind that are doing circles around each other, tell them to stop. Look around. Can you do anything about that thought? If not, cast it aside. Wrap up those worries, regrets, and grudges. Pack them in tight, thank them for their better days and ship them off to the garbage. Sweep out the useless fears and self-doubt. Is it getting better? 

Distill, reduce, minimize, and simplify. Clutter happens. In fact, it seems to collect around us like dust with little or no effort. It takes energy to remove it, but happiness awaits! I encourage you to join me in spending a few minutes this week purging the clutter, taming the thoughts, and sweeping out the mess that saps our energy. Find that clarity. Enjoy it and appreciate it! Oh, and set a reminder to do this again next week.

Have a great week!

How to Approach Problems with a Creative Twist

The kitchen sink wasn’t draining. The Super Bowl was about to start, and a pile of dishes and pre-game food prep was queued up on the counter. “Well, this is great,” I said to myself. I could hear SpongeBob commenting about the pre-game show. Yes, that’s right, we tuned in to Nickelodeon, as all sports enthusiasts would do.

Several years ago, I bought a drain cleaning machine to help clear roots out of our side yard area drain. It’s one of those drum type with a motor and a 75’ auger cable. It has paid for itself ten times over for things like this. I went to the garage and wheeled it to the super small clean out drain opening. I fed the cable into the drain and watched the sink start to slowly drain. As I have done in the past, I added a garden hose to increase the water pressure and ensure the line was clear. The sink was draining. The crisis was over. Well, or so I thought. As I began to pull the cable back out, something happened. It locked up. I tried pushing it back in, but it wouldn’t budge. I wanted to get a look, so I needed to pull the water hose out to see. Oh no! It was stuck too! I pushed, pulled, and even switched the auger direction. Nothing. Then it happened, water started backing up too and was spraying all over me. I felt like I was in one of those cartoon sitcoms where everything goes wrong. I started imagining if I just cut the hose if that would help, but then that would likely permanently clog the drain. I sat there on the back patio, staring at the problem, covered in drain goo.

Large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT are complex systems that use artificial intelligence to predict answers based on context. You provide a statement or question prompt, and it will attempt to answer it. It is like an elaborate function call. The input is the prompt. To derive the output, the model feeds the input into its neural net. The network produces a set of possibilities as to the “next word” (token). Some of those next word options can be equal or similar in probability. It randomly picks one of them. A model parameter that you can use to influence that randomness is called “temperature”. The higher the temperature, the more diverse and unpredictable the output. Using 0.7, as is the default for ChatGPT, provides the model with some creative freedom (including some hallucination). A setting of 0.0 will create nearly identical responses. Turning it up to 0.9 or even as high as 2.0 will produce pure creative output, possibly with little technical relevance.

I’m not a large language model, and even my intelligence may be suspect. At least that is what I was thinking, sitting there in the pile of goo. But maybe I just need to turn up the “temperature” on my thinking. I stopped for a minute and thought about those math problems that you just couldn’t solve. After 5 pages in, you were still unable to reach the conclusion. You were stuck. The only way to proceed was to reframe the problem itself. Start over. Pick a more improbable path and see where it takes you. That’s what I needed to do. I looked at my “stuck drain” problem and decided to turn it over. Literally. I twisted the hose and the cable together. Pop! I heard the cable unwind deep in the wall. It was unstuck and began draining again. And all in time to see the Super Bowl kickoff at Bikini Bottom. I mean, that is, after a shower.

Do you ever get stuck? Does that frustrating problem seem to have no solution? Well, turn up the “temperature” of your thinking! Reframe the problem and approach it from a completely new angle. Explore the less probable path and see if it unwinds the knot and sets the problem free.

What are your skills? I recently saw some research by IBM that suggests that general skills typically have a “shelf-life” of about 5 years. More critically, technical skills expire in about 2.5 years! Fundamentally that means that for us to stay relevant, we are always re-skilling, learning new things and mutating our skills to meet the fast-evolving landscape of technology. How does that feel to you? Exciting, exhilarating and well, maybe even a bit exhausting? I agree!

Constant change is the very nature of life and all of creation. Life and creative energy strive to grow against the gravity of the status-quo, branching and evolving to become more than it was before. Each generation breaks through the bedrock of normalcy and sends roots into the unknown and absorbs it, learns from it, and flourishes. Our generation is no different. Even today, we are on the verge of a vast shift in terms of technological change and disruption.

But there is a danger. Life yearns to become greater, yet our rival, death is in the shadows, lurking to devour us. Progress demands energy and determination, but it is difficult, and the burden can become heavy, sapping away our enthusiasm. There will be the temptation to stop, to stand still, or to give up. That negative propulsion tugs on us every day. But we have a choice. We can defy gravity. We can send our roots into the unchartered unknown, learn from it and grow. How do we do that?

Stay curious! Move forward, do new things, try new ideas, open new doors. What is current in tech? Explore it and learn about it. A world of endless possibilities lies ahead. We are made for this! To grow, to explore, to experiment, and to enjoy life and all creation. And yes, I know, we are but imperfect dust, stardust to be exact. But that stardust was reborn with a glorious purpose to shine and make a difference, to help each other, to learn, to build, and to grow into what has never been before.

The frontier awaits! Technology doesn’t stand still, it keeps moving, powered by human imagination and energy. Embrace the challenge and keep learning, keep growing.

Imagine it is 2029. Describe it to me. What is going on in your life, your family, your job and in the world? What were those amazing things you dreamed about in 2024 and did those dreams come true?

Five years ago, Gene Kim, a good friend and mentor of mine, challenged me to do a thought experiment. He asked me about my goals for 2024. I started off giving general aspirational goals around making a positive impact in the world, at work, supporting my team and my family. He dared me to get specific. He told me to imagine my future self 5 years from now. What would I be proud to have accomplished if it could be anything in the world? Write it down, he said, so you can pull them out in 2024 and compare your dreams to reality. It was so clarifying, so motivating and so powerful.

When I started this exercise in 2019, I confess, I thought some of my goals were audacious if not ridiculous. But as my friend challenged me, I wrote them down anyway.  Here is what I imagined in 2019 about my 2024 future:

1. My team and I helped Disney deliver a large new guest delighting product that wouldn’t happen without our SRE efforts.
2. I became an author of a book and several papers on leadership and using DevOps practices to accelerate business.
3. My team and I partnered with our businesses to expand the impact of SRE and our SRE approach to toil reduction.
4. I’m an inventor listed on a published patent and have several patents pending.
5. My family and I enjoyed several vacations together, managed to stay out of debt and were able to fund college.
6. I’m the maintainer for at least one Open-Source project with over 100 stars and an active community on GitHub.
7. We updated our home with energy efficient windows, solar panels, and built a domestic robot to help our family at home.

Not all my dreams have come true. But many of them have. In fact, all but one! My robot is still a bunch of lines on a paper, a 3D printed arm and a pile of wires in the garage. Still, I can say with absolute certainty that I wouldn’t have accomplished even half of those things if I hadn’t listened to my wise friend and made note of my goals.

We hunger for a mission and objectives that we believe in. We prioritize time for what we think is important. State your mission. Define your objectives. Make those dreams come true, one step at a time. But it requires that first step… Imagine.

Are you ready? Let’s dream into 2029. Take a breath. Close your eyes and push out all other distractions. What will make you happy? What do you want your world to be like? After imagining that, open Notes or your favorite note taking tool with the title, “Goals for 2029” and write down 7 things. Do you believe in them? If so, save your dreams, revisit them every year or so and make them happen!