I think the first time I came across the concept of a scarcity mindset (where one approaches problems believing resources are finite) when I was around 14 or so. This was in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. To quote Covey:

Most people are deeply scripted in what I call the Scarcity Mentality. They see life as having only so much, as though there were only one pie out there. And if someone were to get a big piece of the pie, it would mean less for everybody else.

Covey recommends its counterpart, the abundance mindset, which is the idea that there are enough resources out there for everyone. That said, I don’t buy in to the idea of abundance being superior, because resources and opportunities often are scarce. I’d bring in the Bruce Lee “I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times” quote here; bearing scarcity in mind forces prioritisation, and that if done well is really useful. This may be dangerous, but I’d hazard that scarcity can lead to fear that one is stagnating. This, if managed well, can drive one to, to use Covey’s terms, aggressively “sharpen the saw” (pursue self-improvement) as well.

There are sides of the scarcity mindset that are certainly dark. There is a danger of casting things that are not zero-sum games as zero-sum games. Aggressively focusing on scarcity can lead to excessive stress and blind short-term optimisation (manifesting in things like money dysmorphia as described in this Guardian article). I’m also somewhat guilty of this, but it can lead to hoarding. That said, in my experience a scarcity mindset is often unfairly tarred and feathered – it indeed can often be dangerous, but it has its uses.

Software Engineering

Things changed direction; I expected to move off AtlasDB, but instead became the tech lead (admittedly with a bit of dithering and some convincing from other storage experts – and a few non-storage ones too). My responsibilities have changed somewhat in that I have been spending more time maintaining context and reviewing code. I don’t think there are benchmarks, but I suspect the amount of individual development work that I do is still high relative to other TLs (in any case it’s a spectrum – I’ve worked with one in the past who did more work than I did).

I also got started on studying Designing Data-Intensive Applications after recommendation from some engineers whom I respect. Having spent almost two and a half years on AtlasDB, most of the material is not particularly new to me – that said, this would have been an excellent read when I just started on the team. I’d recommend the book for people working with distributed systems (even if they’re not necessarily working directly on distributed systems – e.g. if doing support).

Finances

With Brexit looming, the pound has been extremely volatile. I was a bit of an uneasy Remainer during the 2016 referendum. In any case, the way things have panned out since has sent me very firmly in the Remain direction now. I’d say my exposure to sterling cash is at relatively low levels. I tend to be somewhat risk-averse, and although GBP is probably undervalued, the danger of no-deal is there.

I haven’t been tracking the markets very closely; from what I remember things went up in January (after getting smashed at the end of December) and then have mostly gone sideways. It’s also coming to the end of the 2018/2019 tax year; I’ve seen the ISA ads around, though not so many for ‘use your capital gains allowance’ which is something I should look at this week.

Expenses-wise, Q1 has been awkwardly high; some of this is because of one-off expenses for activities that’ll actually take place in Q2 (travel and holidays). My overall savings rate is still decent, as income was higher because of bonuses.

Travelling

I had just two trips out of the UK this quarter, and interestingly both were to visit specific friends in the context of specific events. I went back to Singapore in January for Isaac’s wedding – that was a very short trip as I only had close to a day or so to actually spend with family. The other trip was to Zurich for a weekend trip in February to meet Stan.

Hobbies

The logic puzzle train has been chugging along. I took part in most of the WPF Sudoku and Puzzle GPs, though I missed one round of the puzzles as I was in Zurich that weekend. I’ve always been stronger at sudoku and it shows – I’m on overall rank 60/774, with rankings 82/599, 139/598 and 47/541 in the three rounds. I thought round 2 went pretty well, though I broke an easy Classic Sudoku and, more significantly, a (I think still easy) Braille Sudoku that was worth a lot of points. Round 3 was good – all three of the ‘weird’ variants at the end were disposed of quickly. For puzzles I’m on overall 167/557, with rankings of 102/434 and 93/405 in the two rounds I participated in. We’ll see how Sudoku Round 4 goes, though I think it went poorly for me.

I’ve been reading a fair bit too – some readers may recognise that the title of this post is inspired by Matt Haig’s Notes on a Nervous Planet. I first came across his earlier work Reasons to Stay Alive randomly in a Popular bookshop in Singapore late last year, when waiting to meet a friend. I found the book pretty captivating, though I didn’t buy it then – instead, I placed an order for the book to be delivered to me in London. Both of the books held my interest; the former was raw and pretty compelling, while the latter is more familiar territory for me and I think I could to some extent identify with his perspectives.

I also found James Clear’s Atomic Habits to be a very practical read; I’ve been following his emails for a while. I appreciated the principled approach the book presents. He first establishes that things that become habits tend to be obvious, attractive, easy and satisfying; he then explores how to influence behaviours to increase or decrease how much they show each of these traits.

General Thoughts

It’s been a stressful quarter; there has been a lot of change at work, unease in my financial situation, and discontent with things in general. Perhaps this is something worth thinking about; there’s a passage near the end of Notes on a Nervous Planet on diminishing returns, where Haig observes that many people have tendencies to repeatedly move the goalposts when successful. For me, “be good at math” became “top my class in math”, then “top my cohort in high school in math” (I failed this one, though unexpectedly got Physics instead), then “get a first at Imperial”, then “get the first at Imperial”… “with a 90 average”… “while running a club and working part time 20 hours per week”. Similarly, “be a good dev”… can quickly spiral into “with patents”, “building large features”, “be a principal engineer” and so on. It’s important to maintain perspective as to whether the repeated escalation of these goals is something one really wants to do.

There’s usually a song I associate with each quarter. This time around I’ve been listening a fair bit to Drunk Me by Mitchell Tenpenny. He’s a country artist and I don’t listen to country very much, but this is pretty much a straightforward pop song. There are some awkward metaphors in there, but generally I find the production pleasant, and the A4s he hits in the chorus are nice enough. The message involves giving up habits that are likely to lead the singer back to his ex, which is a pretty logical response.

I’ve been sober
‘Cause there ain’t no hangover like you girl
“Baby, can you come over?”
I always find those words at the bottom of a hundred proof

I don’t drink much alcohol, though I do drink quite a bit of coffee and chocolate. In a sense, my ‘alcohol’ would be activities or behaviours I find addictive that are likely to lead to ruin or negative consequences. This could include things like obsessive fear over how the markets are doing or how Brexit is going, or spending time procrastinating. I don’t think there is an object of spite here, unlike in the song, but nonetheless the idea that one may find value in cleaning up one’s life is something I can get behind.