A Bot, Bash and Being Done for the Day
October 27, 2023
What I'm Listening To
'We were kids back then...'
Story From The Week
For the past few months, I’ve been conversing with my new-ish acquaintance, ChatGPT. I would say we’re pals, but the ol’ bot has led me astray one too many times (and then gone on to apologize in a maddening manner that only robots do). So when it comes to tackling complex coding issues, I'm a bit wary of relying on ChatGPT. This week, however, it did help me tackle a problem that I never would have had the time or energy to Google.
Let me set the scene. I am slowly but surely building out a brand guide and component library in Figma for my company. My goal was to gather all the icons used in our mobile app onto a single page in Figma. The hiccup? Each PNG icon file was buried within folders in our codebase. To retrieve each file, I had to open each folder and manually download it. I did this about five times and decided there was a better way.
Cue ChatGPT.
I asked it for a bash script to look in the appropriate directory, loop through each sub-directory, find the file with the correct suffix, and copy that file to my Downloads folder.
Within seconds, I had the script, ran it, and voila! I found myself staring at all the PNG files I needed in one place.
I'll hand it to you this time, ChatGPT!
What Did I Learn?
I read an inspiring article about the 85% rule, which “counterintuitively suggests that to reach maximum output, you must refrain from giving maximum effort.”
As someone who's in the process of healing from burnout, this rule is like a breath of fresh air.
Our world often promotes the idea of "give it your all" and "go as hard as you can." But what if pushing ourselves to the absolute limit means that our minds, bodies, and ultimately our productivity all suffer as a consequence? Not worth it.
The article mentions several practical ways we can give 85% — one of them being setting a “done for the day” time. I'll admit, this one is a challenge for me. I establish a time when I intend to be "done" with work, but I remain available to respond to any Slack messages or Linear ticket comments that come in during the evening.
News flash — this is not being done for the day.
But I'm making progress. Gradually, I'm establishing healthier boundaries and realizing that giving just the right amount of effort to my work isn't a hindrance to being an effective contributor… it's actually the key to it!
What Made Me Confused...
Design in general has left me stumped this week.
I’ve been taking on more UX/UI jobs at my company, because (hello!) startup life.
Because I’m not a trained designer, rather a developer interested in growing my design skills, this means that I stare at a blank Figma frame for about ten minutes and then scroll aimlessly through Dribbble for an hour and then stare at Figma some more.
It’s a whole thing, and I feel totally ill-equipped. But I’m hoping somewhere on the other side of all of this confusion is a humble yet confident designer/developer.