It's time for me time.

[swatts]

Happy New Year Darlings,

The last few years we've been frantically trying to fill in the gaps and keep the LabVIEW eco-system vibrant (and pleasant), and it has taken a toll. Fighting the corporate man is hard work and has no real reward beyond having nice people in your squad. This time of year is a good time to evaluate what makes us happy, what makes us unhappy and what strategies to put in place to maximise one and minimise the other.

If you heard me talk in the last year you will probably have heard me complaining about unpaid/voluntary work. 2023 had a ratio of unpaid:paid work that was very bad for my business. SSDC "lost" about £40,000 in 2023. That makes me unhappy as I worked quite hard.

I'm 57 now, probably got 13 more years in me if I'm lucky and I need to earn my retirement!

Do much less voluntary work (<Unhappy)

My voluntary work was ...

1. Community Training Initiative
2. GDevCon
3. NI Alliance partner CAB
4. Champs Forum / NI  - Trying to make NI appreciate LabVIEW and LabVIEW Developers
5. Talks
6. Blog

What shall I sacrifice?

1) Community Training Initiative - My interests coincide with this as I really want to crack Linux as a development target for SSDC. But other enthusiastic people have bought into the vision, I see this taking on it's own life.

2) GDevCon - Jenny does a lot of the hard work now, but I still put too many hours in GDevCon #4. I need to reduce this further in 2024. We probably need to enlarge/refresh the board for GDevCon Europe.

3) NI Alliance CAB sacrificed - fairly easy decision.

4) Champs Forum / NI - Dealing with corporate NI has not brought me happiness, I shall deal with them less in 2024.

5) Talks - I have some talks left in me, but maybe nothing new in 2024  - I'm really interested in concepts of happiness, success and the psychology of the graphical programmer. Much studying still to do.

6) Blog - My next large task is that I want to build Linux VMs and Linux on a small PC - I want to try different distros and record the journey, it may not be on this platform tho' - but will link from here.

Dealing with Corporate NI/Emerson (<Unhappy)

In 2000 I left the corporate world and I had several motivations for doing so. One of the biggest motivations was how intensely frustrating it is to deal with large organisations.

Along with my many failings I have a couple of super-powers. I can see the simple path and I can drag people along that path. You can fool yourself that using these powers makes you happy, but it doesn't. From now on anyone who wants me to use my super-powers will have to pay me!

New Stuff (>Happy)

DSH Workshops are trying something a bit different in that we are doing general business consulting, I really enjoy this and would like to do more of it.

More Software (>Happy)

I need to build more things in 2024.

More Vacations (>Happy)

I need to have more time away from work, and travel, I like travel.

I'd be interested in hearing your strategy for a happy 2024,

I'm actually quite hopeful that the pendulum will swing in our favour in 2024.

Lots of Love

[joerg.hampel]

Usually, the time "between the years" (that's what Germans call the days between Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve) is reserved for company housekeeping, strategic planning and the likes. Seeing as December was just off-the-charts stressful for us, we decided to decompress instead and not do any work. Unsurprisingly, that didn't go well for me as my thoughts always revolve around my business.

On our way to Austria, we listened to Arnold Schwarzenegger's new book Be Useful, and found it compelling. So much so that I'm now working through the paperback version of it. 

Having ample time to reflect on what worked well in 2023 vs. what needs improvement, combined with listening to Arnold's wisdom, really triggered a few small epiphanies in regard to my goals - for the next business year, but also for life in general. 

Arnold says that if you don't have a clear vision of what you want to be or do or achieve (no matter what that is for each individual), it is difficult to work towards that thing and it's hard to tell if you're already close enough to it to be happy and content. 

I'm currently working on visualising my happy places, drawing pictures in my mind of where I wanna be and what I wanna do. While it is a simple task, it sure isn't easy. I find it very rewarding, though, as I can already feel that I'm a step further on the road to my life goals. 

And even though this is all very abstract, I find that concrete plans and action items start falling into place...

Coincidentally, travel is very high up my list, both for work and for leisure. I envision another road trip with you, old friend, come summer.

[swatts]

I enjoyed our road-trip very much, I think we should organise a coach-trip.. hire a tour-bus and take DSH-workshops (and friends) on the road.

[swatts]

I got some feedback that the article left them a bit sad, I don't really think that way (I'm a happy chap at heart).

If I had done a review of 2023, by any standards it was an exceptional year - Personal highlights for me were mostly the community stuff.

1. Getting the CTI of the ground was amazing fun and a new gang of peeps to play with.
2. I also did a brilliant road-trip and workshops with my pals.
3. GDevCon was just brilliant.
4. GDevCon NA was also brilliant.
5. And did some fascinating and fun stuff in Romania....

I tend to attack issues that make me less than a happy chap quite aggressively. So the article was really aimed at that.

On the assumption that happiness is contagious, I'm really doing for all of you... you can thank me later.

[Intaris]

---

@swatts wrote:

I can see the simple path and I can drag people along that path. You can fool yourself that using these powers makes you happy, but it doesn't.

---

Well, if that isn't the most inane, unspectacular-sounding lesson it has taken me a lifetime to realise. It's one of those things that you can understand quite quickly. Like, you can grasp the concept fairly quickly in an abstract sense. But actually understanding it in the context of yourself, that's a whole different thing. Because that means understanding your own context, which seems to be a really rare thing.

I wish for us all that not only in 2024, but from now and for ever more that we find those things that make us happy and are able to embrace them. If they happen to embrace us back, that is of course hugely beneficial :). If they happen to support us financially also, that's an amazing bonus.

But hesitate when putting off something which will make you happy (As in really happy, soul-nourishing happy) for anything measured on a metric that is not your own.

It's a balancing act, food and housing costs. But so does depriving yourself. We all know of technical debt. We need to balance it with personal debt.

[swatts]

Oh Shane!

"But hesitate when putting off something which will make you happy (As in really happy, soul-nourishing happy) for anything measured on a metric that is not your own."

That is magic and I will steal it ... specifically "anything measured on a metric that is not your own", that distils what I have been driving towards for a few years now.

We allow people to define what happiness and success is, for us. And it's such a personal thing, it seems ridiculous that we allow it to happen over and over.