Once You Take A Step, Everything Changes

image: flickr.com

There are things that can't be planned from start to finish, taking care of all the intricate details. Life, itself, is one of those things.

Everyday I tell myself that everything changes when I take a step. And it is not a fancy new talk but something I have been experiencing for a long time now but didn't know how to explain it until my programming jobs/projects recently opened my eyes to its explanation.

I have been thinking strategically about my business and how to build a global company, one that can impressively take on the world like the US companies are doing. I figured out that since a company like Whatsapp that has almost all its assets as a program/code is worth way more than Turkish Airlines with its fleet of aircraft and physical assets, and it's same with companies like Google and Facebook valued at way more than the companies we typically consider when we think of the biggest companies. Companies like ExxonMobil that builds a city for its workers and people give testimony in church when they get a job there. So why are they valued more even though most of all they have are computer codes? I don't know but one thing is very clear: computer codes are worth more than aircrafts, oil platforms and even skyscrapers.

And as I am just starting and free to pick where to play. I am choosing to play in the computer code world. So I am gradually letting go of training services and consulting services to focus on building web applications. Something more useful than Whatsapp. So I have been dedicating more time to improving my coding skill and focusing more on programming jobs.

One thing about programming is that you can only set what the final product should be like and work like but you can't plan how long it will take you to get it done or the very exact steps you will take to get there. I have tried a couple of times to plan out the milestones and steps I will take in getting a client job done but time and time again I find out that for every significant line of code I write everything changes. New problems/behaviours crop up and the problems I was expecting (and spent huge planning time on how to fix) don't even show up.

Once I take a step forward, everything changes. I no longer do even a wireframe of my program. I just dive in and start working. And I now understand why Henry Mintzberg, a renowned professor of management and expert on corporate strategy, said that in our professional lives we are all like a potter (a craftsman). Our best works are not the planned ones but the ones we are sensitive enough to notice that everything changes after each spin of the clay, and make the most of each new reality.

So everyday I tell myself to be more observant and notice how everything changes when I take a step.