Month: December 2023

Bye bye 2023, welcome 2024

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I´m writing these lines on the last day of 2023, and by the time you read them, it will probably be 2024, Happy New Year!

Close up of four golden number candles for 2024, still unlit. In the background, another candle with number 3 can be seen unfocused, back in the corner

This is the time of the year when we usually take stock of the year just gone, and it´s also a good moment to set goals (not resolutions) for the new year starting.

How did 2023 go for you?

And how would you like 2024 to be?

That yearly review can be done in a variety of ways; today, I´m bringing you a few of the many options for retrospectives used in the Scrummethodology, very popular in software development, where the whole team periodically takes time to pause, assess how things are going, and propose ways to keep improving.

  • Start, stop, continue: this is a pretty standard one. You can write three columns with things you want to start doing (new habits, goals, etc.), things you want to stop doing (or want to get rid of because they went badly for you), and things that went well for you and want to keep doing.
  • "If it was...": this one is about finding a metaphor to represent the period of time under review. If 2023 was a movie (or a book, a TV series, a game, a place, a meme...) which one would it be, and why? And which one would you like 2024 to be?
  • Six thinking hats: this is one of my favourites, it´s a bit longer and more detailed than the other two. The idea here is to review what happened from six different perspectives, as if told by six different people, each wearing a different coloured hat. Some ways of thinking will come more naturally to you, and some others will be more challenging, but the beauty of it is that you´ll come out at the end with a much wider and richer view of the events. These are the six hats:
    • Blue- represents process and organization, it´s the starting point. Here, you can define the details of what you´re planning to review, what you´ll focus on, how much time you´ll spend, etc.
    • White- represents facts, data, numbers... What has happened during these last twelve months? Write it down in the most objective way possible, without adding judgement or feeling.
    • Yellow- represents the positive side. What went well during the year? What got you excited? What are you grateful for?
    • Black- represents the negative side. What didn´t go well? What did you find hard during the year? What difficulties did you encounter?
    • Red- represents emotions. How have you feeling during this time? What events have brought you joy, sadness, surprise, anger or disappointment? What agreements and disagreements have you encountered?
    • Green- represents creativity, new ideas, possibilities... What would you like to change in this year that´s now starting? And how can you approach that change?

You can modify any of these options, or make up your own; the more creative, the better. What matters is creating that space for your own reflection and planning. But in order for this to be effective, it has to be documented in writing, so I encourage you to grab pen and paper, pencils, post-it notes, coloured pens and anything else you can think of to make it fun!

By the way, new year also means new things in BinaryWords: those of you receiving my weekly article via email will have seen a fresh newsletter format, much nicer than the previous one. And if you´re not receiving it yet, what are you waiting for? You can follow this link to subscribe to the mailing list.

Little gifts

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How good are you at choosing gifts?

In my opinion, gifting is a form of art, one at which I´m personally awful at... In fact, that´s one of the main reasons I get so stressed around this time of the year (together with having to pack for the holidays, but I´ll tell you about that some other time).

Group of present-like boxes of different sizes on a wooden table or floor, tied with a ribbon each, seen from above

By the way, I apologize for being so late with these thoughts and reflections; by now, Christmas is around the corner, and if you´re celebrating, I´m sure you already have all your presents sorted... The truth is, what I´m going to say is valid all year round, so I hope you find it useful anyway.

Sometimes we make our own lives harder by searching for the perfect gift for each person; or maybe we buy gifts just for the sake of buying gifts, out of habit, tradition or a sense of obligation. Because it´s "what you should do", because it´s always been done this way. With that mindset, what is likely to happen? Well, on the one hand, ending up with a hole in our bank account, and on the other hand, facing a big huge pile of things we don´t need.

What if we simplified a little?

Minimalism is something I´ve always found interesting, and even though I don´t consider myself a proper minimalist (my "just in case" mentality plays against me on this one), there are a few minimalist principles I tend to keep fresh on my mind, starting with less stuff, less stress.

Joshua Becker describes on his website, Becoming Minimalist a different way of establishing priorities, both when choosing gifts and also as rules for life in general:

We can value...

  • Needs over wants.
  • Quality over quantity.
  • Experiences over possessions.

This proposal points to a much more sustainable lifestyle, and it also helps us to get back to the original intention of gifting: creating a moment of joy and excitement, a moment of shared happiness with that person you love so much. And if we can do all that in a more enriching, more economical and even more ecological way, what else could we ask for?

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What about you? What strategies do you use when gifting (or not gifting)?

Why am I like this?

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Has it ever happened to you that a song pops into your head and you get caught up in a loop, repeating one or two lines again and again, either in your head or out loud?

That happens to me a lot. For example, with a song by Orla Garland that I discovered within the Heartstoppersoundtrack; I love it! The title is Why am I like this?, which is exactly the line that´s repeated nonstop during the chorus 🙂

Hand holding a post-it note with the word WHY? written on it

Have you ever asked yourself that question? I get the impression that many of us do, and unfortunately, quite often in a negative way, as in: "What´s wrong with me? Why am I so weird? Why can´t I be more normal?"

Ahh, that´s the trap, believing there´s such a thing as "being normal".

We are the way we are, and there are as many ways of being in this world as inhabitants there are here on Earth. When we take this into account, the question becomes much more interesting: "Why am I like this? What makes me be exactly the way I am?"

And the reason why it´s so interesting is because nobody knows for sure. If we asked an anthropologist, a neuroscientist, a priest and an astrologer about the reasons behind a certain specific behaviour, I´m sure they would give us completely different answers, each of them based on their own experience and knowledge. Who would be right? We don´t know. Perhaps each of them would be able to see different pieces of this huge jigsaw puzzle of our personality.

We´ve already talked in this blog about how our brain loves simplifying, as it makes life easier while saving a lot of energy. One of the ways in which it simplifies is looking for a single explanation for each thing, as if everything in life followed a simple law of cause and effect. But deep down we know it´s not like that: at any given moment, there are multiple causes and effects influencing each other; that´s what makes life so complex, so diverse, and most of all, so unpredictable.

But then, how can we answer the damn question?

  • First of all, acknowledging that our personality is very complex, and that it´s influenced by many different factors (Alberto, my enneagram teacher, uses the analogy of us being an alloy of several metals, each of us with a unique combination).
  • From that starting point, we can observe, investigate, look out for patterns... Curiosity (without judgement) is what´s going to help us most in this task of getting to know ourselves, and others, better. We're going to start realizing things.
  • From there, theories and explanations of why we are the way we are will start emerging, and given that we´re not going to be able to know whether they´re true or not, the best thing we can do is choose the ones that help us the most, and then progressively verify and expand them as we find out more.

What do you think of this approach? I admit I've asked myself this question, "why am I like this?" many many times, as I've always felt a bit (or a lot) like an oddball. Maybe that's why I like the song that much.

And regarding being or not being normal, let me share two quotes with you. The first one encourages us to set aside our prejudices and generalizations, and to get closer to the other person so that we can get to really know them:

Viewed up close, nobody is normal.

Caetano Veloso

And the second one I find very funny, it's on one of my fridge magnets and it reminds me that on this topic we're all more or less on the same boat:

Remember: as far as anyone knows, we're a nice normal family.

Homer Simpson

In summary: deep down we are all oddballs, in our own unique way 🙂

Unlikely friendships

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This week I got a movie recommendation. I haven´t had the chance to watch the movie yet, but from what I´ve heard, it´s a typical story of two people coming from different backgrounds who don´t seem to have anything in common, yet they end up developing a very special friendship.

The hands of two people bumping fists sideways

I have to say I always found this kind of stories really interesting; stories about unlikely yet meaningful friendships.

For example, I remember a teenage TV show from the nineties that I used to love, most of all for the seemingly random interactions between different characters, and for how they ended up becoming friends without even noticing (or sometimes reluctantly noticing). It was titled "My so-called life", and even though it only lasted one season, it left us a few scenes that I personally consider masterpieces.

This picture shows (in low resolution, apologies) a few of the characters:

Image from TV show "My so-called life" where a group of friends spending time together in a room

I especially remember a conversation between the two boys from the picture, Brian Krakow (the blond one) and Rickie Vasquez (the dark haired one), where they spend a good few minutes supposedly talking to each other, but with each of them obsessing over a different topic, just as if they were talking to themselves in turns (how often in our lives do we do that as well?); initially it seems like they´re each doing their own thing, but eventually you realize somehow they´ve been listening and supporting each other... Sometimes, simply getting someone to listen to you and keep you company is what makes all the difference.

And sometimes, it´s surprising how much you may get to have in common with someone apparently very different from you, and how much you can get to learn, precisely from your differences. In my particular case, a few of those first "unlikely friendships" came into my life just by chance, but they opened my mind so much and I got so much out of them that at a certain point I started looking for them myself, if unconsciously.

So, what´s the benefit of having diverse friendships, from different environments, with different lifestyles and even different ages? Well, taking into account that humans very often learn by contrast, getting to know other perspectives and other ways to understand life is a great help towards expanding our own little world, and realizing that the way we do things is not the only possible way by any means, but just another option among many other equally valid ones. This gives us more flexibility and resources to face everyday challenges, and ultimately helps us to live a fuller life.

In reality, it all comes back to the same: the more we learn about ourselves and those around us, the more we understand, the less we judge, and the freer we become.

All of this without forgetting just how wonderful it is to have friends with whom you can share (Thanks!) 🙂

As I already mentioned a couple of years ago in another post, "friendship comes in all shapes and sizes".