Life Lessons

This revision is from 2025/02/07 13:52. You can Restore it.

Life Lessons from the First Half-Century of My Career - Sharing 16 life lessons, and nine magic words. https://cacm.acm.org/opinion/life-lessons-from-the-first-half-century-of-my-career/

People-Focused

1. Family first! Don’t sacrifice your family’s happiness on the altar of success.
2. Choose happiness.
3. It’s the people, not the projects, that you value in the long run.
4. The cost of praise is small. The value to others is inestimable.
5. Seek out honest feedback; it might be right.
6. “For better or for worse, benchmarks shape a field.
7. “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.
8. Beware of those who believe they are the smartest people in the room.

Career-Focused

1. “Most of us spend too much time on what is urgent and not enough time on what is important.”
2. “Nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without passion.
3. “There are no losers on a winning team, and no winners on a losing team."
4. Lead by example.
5. “Audentes Fortuna iuvat.” (Fortune favors the bold).
6. Culture matters.
7. It’s not how many projects you start; it’s how many you finish.
8. Look for the positive opportunities.

• When you’ve been together that long, people ask what your secret is. It’s not that we don’t argue; one repeated source of friction is she tells me a problem she is having in the hope of getting empathy and I, as a good engineer, instead try to solve her problem. The secret is what we say after we resolve a disagreement. Usually one of us repeats these nine magic words: “I was wrong. You were right. I love you.” No substitutions! The last three words can’t be, “You’re a jerk!” And absolutely no additional use of the word “but”.

By David A. Patterson

Life - Lessons