Join 📚 Jim's Highlights
A batch of the best highlights from what Jim's read, .
Agile project-management methodologies didn’t alleviate the need for programmers to strive to be better coders, but they did prevent the developers from having to excessively worry about what they should be coding and whether they had done enough. Leaving individuals to focus on executing their work well, while letting scrutinized systems tackle the allocation and organization of this work, might just be exactly the balance needed to allow growth without dehumanization.
The Frustration With Productivity Culture
newyorker.com
The peace of mind on offer here is of a higher order: it lies in the recognition that being unable to escape from the problems of finitude is not, in itself, a problem. The human disease is often painful, but as the Zen teacher Charlotte Joko Beck puts it, it’s only unbearable for as long as you’re under the impression that there might be a cure. Accept the inevitability of the affliction, and freedom ensues: you can get on with living at last.
Four Thousand Weeks
Oliver Burkeman
At that age I had a certain vision of the world, this very tidy, control-freak, Khalil Gibran–reading idea of nobility, like the way to be a good person was to hover righteously above all those weak, dopey sinners down there. Sort of a purity obsession. To go out in the Chicken Van every night was to constantly have that view undercut. Because the whole world was crazy and erratic and sinful. But the people I met were also sweet and weird and endearing. You’d get all of that in one night.
George Saunders, the Art of Fiction No. 245
theparisreview.org
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