A Parallel Idea
I used to be a .NET developer. Nowaways, I am a DevOps solutions architect with a focus on Azure and Kubernetes.
I also love productivity topics, especially when it comes to doing more with less of my time. I'm also a daddy, so time is a limited resource for me.
I’ve recently been listening a lot of audio books from Seth Godin. He talks about when and why to push through hard times, how to be a linchpin, and what makes a great marketing.
Among the many points he makes, there’s one idea that’s really stuck with me - daily blog posts.
It’s hard for me to fathom writing daily blog posts with a busy life. I’ve got so much already - the wife, the kid, the pets, the housework, the work work, and the tech community.
I remember writing my first blog post. I wrote it and re-wrote it, then re-wrote it again. I had a hard time forming my thoughts and building an idea. With time, I have been able to write some and I’ve gotten much better at explaining topics.
Then I started thinking, what would I do differently if I wanted to write a blog post a day?
First, I’d have to make me a priority. Scheduling every minute of my day - an Indistractable idea.
Secondly, I’d have to make it very simple for me to create a blog post.
I realized… I had a burial ground of blog posts. It was so cumbersome for me to create a blog post, that I had a few that I never finished! To create a blog post, I had to use my home computer, then start a Jekyll dev server, write markdown, preview it, then pick out images, download them to my drive, commit them to the repo, reference them from the blog post, test to ensure the markdown rendered properly again, ensure I had the right Jekyll front-matter, then commit, wait for publish and ensure I didn’t mess anything up.
Exhausting.
Not to mention because of my consulting life, I am up to 6 computers and I can’t possibly have Jekyll and the right version of Ruby on all 6 for being able to crank out blog posts.
So, I invested in moving my blog to Netlify and adding Netlify CMS. Now, it’s much easier for me to write a blog post - from anywhere. No tooling required. No fuzzing around with pictures.
And it dawned on me. Pushing towards daily blog posts is already changing my habits and mindset.
How much more would culture and habits change at an organization that committed to deploy to production daily?
Accelerate and State of DevOps Report show us that elite/high-performing organizations deploy to production daily.
What would you change if you had to deploy daily?
