Your Attitude

The Manifesto will change your attitude about others and yourself. This chapter is about the most important ways it does so.

The Right Goal

You are more important than the computers you maintain. You must make your happiness your highest goal.

So what is happiness? I do know some things that happiness is not.

• Happiness is not wealth. There are unhappy rich people just as there are unhappy poor people.
• Happiness is not booze or drugs. There is always a crash.
• Happiness is not having an endless stream of lovers. At some point hedonism becomes unfulfilling and dangerous.
• Happiness is not even power. We do not want people to like us because we dominate them. We just want to be likable.

When I am on my deathbed, looking back at my life, I want to be pleased. I want to have given of myself to others regardless of whether they deserved it. I want those I influenced to be happier and better because I was here. I also want to have done things that I enjoyed.

Any day that I am doing any of those things, I am happy. You probably have a different definition than I do, and that is okay. However, I challenge you to define happiness in such a way that it excludes altogether the happiness of other people.

This is the common thread that binds humans together. We are tied up in each other’s happiness. Improve the lives of those around you, and you will feel happy. It is that simple.

No Ego

Minimizing your ego is a powerful way to bring happiness to your workplace and your users. It shows them that they are more important than the hardware they use.

There are at least five reasons to get rid of your ego.

From a purely pragmatic point of view, you have to understand that this hurts your relationship with the people you think are “inferior”. Generally, the people in a workplace are good people, and strive to do their jobs with sincerity and diligence. When they fail, it has almost nothing to do with you, and almost everything to do with stresses and problems in their lives or in the institution. So be nice. You do not help an already bad situation if you add your enmity for them on top of what baggage they carry.

From a developmental point of view, there is not much difference between you and the person whose computer you are maintaining. With a difference in education, or even just upbringing, you could be them and they could be you. Highlighting this difference cannot fix the problem. In fact, to other people, you appear insecure when you condescend based on intellect or education.

From a simple mathematics point of view, the people who are using “your” systems have more experience than you do. It takes 10,000 hours to be an expert at something. Have you spent 10,000 hours using Excel? Maybe. Collectively, your users have done at least that and far more. They are experts at being users: you are not. It is that simple. We do not often scoff at the words of single experts when they have twenty years experience - neither should you scoff at the words of your users.

From a historical standpoint, you are eminently replaceable. The universe will not grind to a halt when you retire. Presidents and Prime Ministers will not beseech you to return to your post. You will simply be replaced. It is the way of things, and it is nothing to be sad about.

Finally, from a talent point of view, the people who are using the systems we put in place also have talents that we do not. Generally, they are able to do with high precision and at great speed, for long periods of time, tasks that give us incredible discomfort after just 20 minutes. This is a behemoth strength, one that pays your salary, and one that you ignore at your own peril.

Now, if you read this, and reflexively think “I do not have an ego,” and are prepared to argue it for hours, giving examples of how great you are at not having an ego, I hope you will realize how egotistical that response is.

Healthy Body

Having a healthy body is also a part of putting yourself above the computer systems you work with.

Exercise your body. Even something as simple as walking every day makes a huge difference. I am trying to walk in order to get some daily exercise. I hope to find a sport soon that I can do with a friend or two for an even better body-feel.

Eat when you are hungry. You are doing nothing less than fueling your amazing mind so it can do great things, on a daily basis. Do not fuel it with unbalanced garbage - each vegetables, fruits, grains, dairy, and meat, if you eat meat. Junk food is okay every once in a while, but sooner or later it will take a huge toll on you. If you have to pack a lunch with you wherever you go, do it. Packing a lunch is far cheaper than take-out, for the record.

Sleep when you are tired. Your body needs rest for many reasons which are already documented. For those of you who pull all-nighters on a regular basis, I greet your cries of “sleep when I’m dead!” with a stern “don’t sleep and you will be dead.” All-nighters will be necessary from time to time in IT - but try to minimize them, they are destructive to whatever positive sleep rhythms you can build.