Craziness is a requirement

The resistance feeling by outliers is not a challenge, It's the natural feedback telling "You are in the right track of being yourself"

BasketBall is LIFE - A single player cannot win championships: neither your company

This year 2018 there was a great FIFA World Cup, France end up with an amazing team.  In the other end we saw Argentina not quite making it even with Messi or Ronaldo having games that It was nice to see the individual performance, but still didn't cut it! It didn't make Portugal champion.

LeBron James looses 4-0 NBA finals? 
How so? The other players are fantastic, he might currently be the best basketball player in the world. 


Why? 

The world is yelling us all aloud:

You need a Tribe! A Culture!

Why schools still focus on academic individual performance?

You can try to do things yourself every once in a while, not too often.
When you do it, make yourself accountable of not moving the energy around, It's the team that creates the impossible product, the enjoyment of wanting to be part of that tribe, part of that journey.

Working with rockstars or being one is a great opportunity to explain this metaphor.  A team needs to scale beyond a single skillful individual.  Magic will never come from a single contributor, no matter what position or payment is involved.

Miracles happen when every team mate tries to make others better than its own self.

BasketBall is LIFE - Move the ball

The more teammates touch the ball the more impactful energy is around the court, the defense get tired and confused, our team is engaged and there is a good karma in the field.

Each pass means:

• I trust you
• I need your help
• Your skills makes me look for you
• I care for the team, not just this shot

For the other team is the complete opposite, their physical and mental energy comes down, It's a very challenging battle.

The same thing happens in companies, either super stars take a direction and move forward or teams engage to experiment and count in each other.  It might be the right/wrong direction team or single person push, still the behavior and championships rely on the execution of the team.

A great example on the software development field is code reviews.  They might sounds like you don't trust a single individual, but It's the complete opposite.   The team cares about what you do, let us be part of it.   Every time you comment you pass the ball and the team outcomes become richer, the ball moves, you pass it because

• you may fail the shot?
• because you don't want to take risk?
• you don't care?

No !!!

You pass it to have fun, do nice plays, make it easy, get the other team tired and win championships not only one play.   Same thing with code reviews: share knowledge, pass the energy of your code, explain, receive feedback and enjoy the journey as a team!

Focus in the team energy, because that's what creates miracles in the court and kickass software!

Rhythm

Passion has been something good all the time.
Balance is a positive term as well!
Normal is pretty good too.
Control is under the same lines, like a good state for your brain:

    "Your kid is normal"

    "That illness is normal"

    "Even with the problems at birth, your baby will be normal"

    "You have your business under control"

    "work/life balance is very important"

    "That painting has an exceptional balance"
    "I got this under control"

Society does not qualify as positive terms: crazy, out of balance, apathy, a-normal:

    "Your baby will be a-normal"

    "My life is unbalanced"

    "Your dad is crazy"

    "Apathy is not allowed, you need to participate"

    "Your business is a mess"

Is this correct ?  Do not worry if you are in the negative qualification created from society, do not worry or feel rewarded either if you are in the positive side, in fact Do not put attention to the judgment at all or try to learn something from the labels applies to your current condition.

Apathy may be bad, but a little bit of it could save your life, I don't know.   I have been always very passionate about what I do, losing focus and struggling in life to satisfy expectations that make me think I'm a great professional, a successful person.   There has been times when some external influence make me think about where I'm going with such a hurry, with such inertia.  Why ?  Where ?   Is there any good reason to earn a million dollars ? Is there any reason to be healthy ? to be happy ? Do I need to be at all ? I have tried to pursuit great goals in life and achieving some of them actually made me feel happy for a while.   Beautiful moments that made me feel relaxed, in balance, with no turmoil, having success, without doubts, without learning, without passion.    They do not sound that beautiful from this perspective.

Is it possible to have a balanced passion ?

Is it possible to Create from structure ?

Is it possible to organize Craziness ?

Is it so bad to be creative that you cannot have a Ferrari ?  Ouch, most of the 'normal' people do not have a Ferrari,  Is it so bad to be creative that you may commit suicide ?  Most of the 'normal' people do not commit suicide (thanks good)  Is it so bad to be creative that you may Dance and Sing all day ?  Most of the 'normal' people may spend the whole day without a single dance. Is it so bad to be creative that you and your loved ones may suffer extreme poverty ?  Uff, this is a thought one, what is normal?

Is it so bad to be creative that you have to prepare yourself at school to be an employee that will perform and produce expected knowns for the community?

Let's visualize a guy painting from 9 am to 12 pm, to have lunch and complain about the government’s new initiative and go back to work walking slowly to waste some minutes before taking the first painting progress looking forward for the end of the day and worried about management decisions.  By the way, at the end of the week he needs to report the project progress achieved against the expectation he committed  the previous week. If you believe this guy existed, It wasn't Van Gogh neither Picasso, nor Diego Rivera.

There may be another guy, thinking about balance; he decided to do some exercise at morning to exercise his muscle and oxygenate the brain, sleeping at 9pm so that he can live a healthy life. His name is Mozart and He used to go to the church every single sunday, by the way I go to the church with him.

Another guy, CEO of a globalized company avoid risks and play safe, he wants to make the bonus for the CEO under the financial goals established by investors.   He always prefers to play on tested markets with products well established so that correct numbers could talk by themselves to convince stockholders.  His name was Steve Jobs and ha had been CEO of apple for his whole life with a very peaceful life, no stress, a simple life, very professional, He graduated from Stanford, loves to drink Horchata and enjoys dancing Ricky Marti song "Vive la vida loca" mixed with "Macarena" ....  "Aha".

Another guy is working from 9 am to 12 pm, having a healthy lunch, go back to work looking forward for the end of the day to spend time with family, friends, do some exercise and have a healthy dinner, is this a sarcasm as well, I hope so !

Can you imagine yourself doing what you love the most?

10 years ago (Dec 2006) for some reason I was deeply intrigued with the possibility to have a balanced life with Passion.   I made my decision, dress my detective jacket and went out looking for answer with international experts in the area.  My beautiful wife was thinking that It may be possible, but looks like we had long conversations, several night of hard thinking, or hardly thinking, I don't remember with of those two we were doing, but we finished definitively growing, our confusion was much bigger.   Then we decided to visit the beautiful country that looked at me when I was borned.   Getting together with my family, we love to talk until 2 or 3 am just talking, so I took advantage to have some free pooling with my family.    Families are very protective, they are cautious about their opinions because they love you and do not want you to suffer, so normally is kind of a elementary school recommendations: "When is time of Social Science, focus on it and deliver all you passion on it, when is break, play and enjoy at your best, then eject the program for playing and connect the Maths disk, but insert the disk with a lot of passion, right?  Passion could be addressed at different times of the day".

Then I decided to have some serious research with a social group of philosophers, We used to get together when I was living on Leon Guanajuato (ajuya, la Vida no vale naaaaada) every Tuesday to talk about deep soul topics like who has the ""mula de seises"", How many ones are outside and what is the best table-dance in the city.  I was short of cash for my research so I took advantage of this group of philosophers and when they were slightly "pedones" I gave them a kiss.  Je Je...  no no that wasn't the point, I did gave them a kiss but after that I ask them "Hey my friends, Is it possible to have balance with passion jip!  you know  jip!  together the 2 both of them ?"  When you are "happier" than usual, something comes from you like a special talent that you didn't know about.  After a lot of reasoning we decided that wasn't the way the world works.   If you want to have money you need to produce effectively and focus on deliverables on balancing.   Do not try to be too “Bohemio”, do exercise, have a nice house, get married and the history you already know.

Against my will we decided to make a toast in the name of the passion we need to control and keep the beer coming.

There is a very interesting character, my father in law, I like him.  He is an artist, a Bohemian, a 24x7 smoker, very passionated about his work, a genius, is always nice to talk with.   He was one of my sources for the research I was making.

He told me "My dear Mauricio (in Spanish, he doesn't like to speak English), I think we need to look for the Rhythm of our lives, like any concert of classic music, you hear several tones running at different piece on different timing". 

I loved it !!! 

That's it, that's what God want us to do.   To play the rhythm of your life, your own melody.   Keeping my eyes open and my ears listening. I was able to see things were not that simple to accept before.   Rhythm was the secret, it was the key to enjoy the journey of your own life.

I didn't know this could be a good excuse for a blog, but the idea was absorbed and It kept growing.   I was able to share the outcome from my professional research chatting with friend now an then.

One of those opportunities were a great society BYP, Boise Young Professionals, they organized a kind of workshop with small groups and leaders from different disciplines.  It was a great experience, very interesting people and they created an inspirational environment.  In our 2nd meeting, we were talking about the famous topic "life/work balance" who haven't heard about it.  Everyone was having different ideas: Pilates, Walk, Gym, Run, Read, Music, Food, a complete life. While I talk with you about this, allow me to take a little bit of red wine Ahhhhh! and some classic music to set the environment for the coming part.

I was listening and as soon as the opportunity came I Shared the possibility of a different option

RHYTHM

Tracing the way

Considering myself a fake inventor! It's true & enough of it!!! No regrets, this is my journey and I will always be tracing it.

We are so comfortable with the biggest limitation: money

Getting used to have full agreement to move is pragmatic, so many leader and team initiative to avoid conflict and "grow"

Enough of it! 

This is great time to break it, create, invent.

Alice in Wonderland:
"Bayard: If you diverge from the path...
Alice: I make the path!"

References:
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Set your prompt with git branching information

parse_git_branch() {
  git branch 2> /dev/null | sed -e '/^[^*]/d' -e 's/* \(.*\)/\1/'
}

function remoteBranch() {
    git rev-parse --abbrev-ref --symbolic-full-name @{u} 2> /dev/null | sed 's/origin\///'
}

PS1="\[\e[01;31m\]\$(parse_git_branch)\[\e[00m\]:\$(remoteBranch) \w:\n\[\e[01;31m\]$ \[\e[00m\]"

Very helpful to when you are juggling several beasts at the same day

Set the git repo name on terminal Title

function get_repo_name() {
if git rev-parse — git-dir > /dev/null 2>&1; then
 : 
 basename `git rev-parse — show-toplevel` 2>&1 /dev/null
else
 : 
 pwd
fi
}

PROMPT_COMMAND=’echo -ne “\033]0;$(get_repo_name)\007”’

Very helpful when having many tabs open on while developing cool shit!