Have you found your sense of comfort?

Kent Beck, a founder of an extreme programming, as well as one of the founder of Agile Manifesto. He’s currently working at Facebook as a coach for programmer.

One of the session I attended during Agile Singapore 2013 is “East at Work” , where he honestly shared that this talk was actually inspired by his wife, “Can you talk something relating to life?”, his wife said. I won’t go into full length of 1.5 hours of his talk because I know that InfoQ, media sponsor, will post his video soon.

Lots of his point was relating to coding (of course, he’s programmer). However, reading between the line, he’s trying to communicate many points relating that we as a human should find our comfort of whatever we are doing.

Kent Believe that no one shouldn’t spend too much time to judge if he/ she is the best or the worst. Comparing the effort to move pendulam center no matter where you stand. The amplitude is too high and we shouldn’t waste it.

It’s unarguable that we all at one time in life thought we are the best and probably no one will ever invent what we can do or think. In contrast, we also used to be in the situation where we think we are the worst creature that ever live in the world because we do something very stupid that nobody can be that stupid.

This two sides of pendulam is where we used to stand and we should try to reduce the amplitude of the two side as low as possible. Otherwise, the energy will be wasted as a result of putting us back to the comfortable spot.

For Kent’s spot, they are:

• My work matters
• My code works
• I’m proud of my work
• I make public commitment
• I am accountable
• Interpret feedback
• I am a beginner
• I meditate
• I serve

It was a well delivered session by Kent Beck. They are still left for my interpretation and I will share when I have thought about it deeply. At the end of the day, each and everyone pendulum will have a different spot.

No matter what industry you are in, I hope you will start finding your sense of comfort. It’s not only to help you live your life to the fullest but also the world will reap the benefit of getting the outcomes with the least waste.