Fall Prep Isn't Just For the Bees 🐝
Aug 30, 2024 2:48 pm
Happy Friday,
I don't know about the rest of you, but I do know I get that weird itch in Spring that I need to clean up and make everything feel fresh again. I also get the same feeling right now through early fall. Only it isn't to freshen things. It's to prepare.
Now this feeling could be because one of the tasks that occupies my mind is preparing my bees for winter. I have a little video below showing the first main step of taking honey and doing a treatment for varroa mites. The next steps involve making sure they have enough food and combining any weak hives. Those steps will happen over the next month or so.
Still, I find myself looking around my office, looking at my list of ever-growing emails (For those of you who remember, I do normally keep my inbox at zero, but I've slipped), and various other lists of things I've put off with an urge to accomplish a lot. I want to go into the winter better than I am now.
Which leads me to another thought—what kind of preparation should organizations do leading into the holiday season?
The last quarter of the calendar is starting very soon, so folks will look at the accumulated PTO. Last-minute pushes to accomplish annual or quarterly goals are about to hit, and oddly enough, lots of folks seem to transition jobs.
I do think that for many organizations, there is a great opportunity to shift focus from the day-to-day hustle and look inward. Clean up some of that tech-debt. Optimize some of those slower operations in your product. Work on how critical information flows between groups. Re-adjust how you operate as a team. Examine where you might be able to be more impactful.
Strangely, in the tech world, we tend to see peak usage during the holidays, but it is also when people are off on vacation the most. Preparing now, could lead to one of the better seasons in years.
As for me, the things hovering near the top of my list that I want to focus more on are:
- Writing - I used to write about 3 articles a week, I'd like to get back to at least one.
- Speaking - I used to speak at about 6 conferences a year. I need to start applying to at least one a month.
- Office Cleanup - Ok, I'm not proud to admit it, but I've been in this house close to two years and my office is still where all the miscellaneous boxes wound up.
- reko.day - This is a side business that I've been ignoring because the next step requires I develop and invest in a skill I'm awful at.
Why did these things make the list? Well, each one checks a very specific box that I will feel better about who I am and what I'm doing professionally.
What about you? Does this idea of fall prep speak to an itch you have like mine? What's on your list?
Here's my weekly update for August 30th, 2024...
🗒️ Three Things I Wish I Knew as a Developer
Out of a million things I learned in my career in software, there are three uncommon lessons I learned: Slow down, sleep well, and experiment.
🗒️ The Dos and Don’ts of Refactoring
Refactoring to many teams means clean up the code, but they've also been burned by long refactoring projects that didn't improve much.
In this article I'll share the basic dos and don'ts about refactoring to consistently improve code with low risk.
Want to know how I get honey from my bees?
This video shows the process of using bee escapes to get honey from several hives.
Enjoy,
Ryan Latta