One of the main reasons why I have been reluctant to build this site out is the tendency to go all out in terms of performance.
I can remember one of my first projects back in the mid 2000’s when I first joined EMC, and we had a project that was red and getting worse. It involved a data center relocation down in White Plains, NY. It involved a slew of key engineering resources that wanted nothing to do with an IT project manager with all of 2 days at the company. It was a tremendous opportunity. We had a very, very good team on the IT front, and I managed to make some incredible friends during the effort – some of whom are likely reading this right now. It also involved an engineering business unit that was being forced to migrate into a new office for a variety of legitimate business reasons. I managed to make some lifelong friends in that engineering team as well.
You know what happened with the project? We ended up getting the project delivered on time, and we did so with some incredible team work. It was during this time that someone referred to me as The Extreme – which is ironic given my current address. I have also never seen the movie Twister. I’m told it is a compliment, and that it was a name that really captured the ability to get things done. Anyway, I have had a tendency to push hard to get the necessary things done, and this particular project was one of those instances back in 2008.
What is the point? Well, I have learned that there is a time and a place to push hard, and to know when to relax a bit on the gas too.
This 84 day journey of posts is not necessarily about the perfection or completeness of content each day.
Many days, I’m sure the content will be more abrupt and shorter in duration than I would have liked if my time was unlimited.
This concern is one of the reasons why I have held back on starting this up. This tendency to over deliver has caused me pain in the past on a variety of fronts in a multitude of ways. This 84 day journey is as much about sharing as it is about conquering some limiting behaviors.
Focusing on the content being strong enough to help someone else, rather than ‘perfect or close to perfect’ in my eyes is something this journey will be hitting squarely upon. It is a lesson worth applying in other projects underway in other parts of my life too.
80 to go.
