I’m on my way back from a skiing trip.
Over the last years, I (re-)learned skiing. There are a few things I try to take away from that experience for my next Salesforce project.
1. Mistakes cost lots of energy
2. Do the hard parts while I have energy
3. Too many opinions cause trouble
4. Learn a technic that gets you down the hill somehow
5. Have fun
Bonus takeaway: Warning vests look funny until you need them
1. Mistakes cost lots of energy
Falling is something part of learning to ski. Especially at the beginning mistakes (falling) happen all the time. Once I got better at skiing and fell less I understood: Falling and getting up costs most energy. Soon I avoided falling, rather go a little slower than fall yet another time. This made skiing so much less exhaustive.
Takeaway: I should avoid mistakes at any cost, rather have my task take a day longer. Fixing a mistake can derail my whole project because of the loss of energy.
2. Do the hard parts while I have energy
Skiing is exhausting, the longer I ski, the harder everything becomes. One the first day we made the mistake of having a hard part at the end of our day, it ended in a major crash due to lack of conncentration. Going forward we planned our days to do the hard parts in the morning and have easy parts at the end of our day.
Takeaway: The longer a project goes, the less energy/motivation is left. I should get the hard things out of the way early.
3. Too many opinions cause trouble
This time we’ve been a group of 4. First, we tried to find a consensus for all decisions. Long story short, no decision but lots of bad blood. We switched to a system where we had one designated decision-maker.
Takeaway: Have a trusted leader and follow her guidance. While a certain level of discussion is helpful, at some point it becomes contra-productive.
4. Learn a technic that gets you down the hill somehow
Skiing can be very elegant, but the elegant technics are not doable for a newbie right away. Every ski instructor teaches you a very basic technic at the beginning. It’s not elegant and later you hardly use that basic technic. This basic technic is there to get you down any slope no matter what especially the situations I couldn’t apply the more advanced technics.
Takeaway: Find a way to get the hard parts to work early on. Hopefully, you can replace it later with something better, but worst case you could use that solution to get the project done somehow.
5. Have fun
Learning to ski can be done in different ways, the best instructor I had made it fun. While the exercises stayed the same, having fun made it so much easier to follow along.
Takeaway: Trying to make a project fun should be a priority. Sure, it’s work but we can try. Even cheese fun is better than none.