Do the Opposite - Announcing Friendly Golang, FI/RE To Design Our Lives, Pros And Cons Of Remote Work

Greetings Friends,

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Announcing a new project! Welcome to Friendly Golang!

As promised, you as members of the Do the Opposite community & newsletter are the first ones to know about any new projects, updates and announcements. Today I am very happy to announce "Friendly Golang" - a welcoming, supportive community of people learning the Go programming language.

I know a lot of DTO subscribers are also interested in learning to code so this will be right up your alley. I've been learning Golang for 3 years or so now, starting from learning it for fun, to getting more serious about it, then working on it at my previous job and now current job as well.

As I was learning more Golang, I've noticed that there isn't too much information about Go that is targeted for beginners and people coming from interpreted (not-compiled) languages like JavaScript, Python, Ruby, for whom many of the concepts of Go seem foreign at first. I know that because that was me: I knew only JavaScript and wanted to pick up Golang and had some issues understanding some topics like pointers or types and interfaces. There's definitely a learning curve there. The amount of resources available that are targeted towards very experienced people coming from Java and C++ background is staggering. Not too many of those are approachable for beginners and even for intermediate developers.

Friendly Golang is here to bridge that gap. It's a blog and a community/platform with a goal to unite everyone who loves Go and those who want to explore and learn it.

When you subscribe to the Friendly Golang email updates - you will receive a step by step action plan of learning Golang with specific resources that will help you get from zero knowledge about it to a level where you are comfortable with the language. You will also receive updates when a new blog post is out. The posts I am planning will all focus on Go basics and understanding the concepts of the language, doing practical tasks with it.

There's going to be more than just blog posts and newsletter but I will definitely be announcing new things as they become available :)

P.S. I hope you like the little graphics on the website and twitter. They were custom created for me by my friend. If you need any artwork (illustrations) done, let me know in a reply to this email or in Twitter DM (@ka11away) and I will connect you with her. Also, there's more illustrations than currently displayed on website/twitter of FG, so you will soon see more of them :)

Here's the website: Friendly Golang website
And twitter: FG Twitter

Disclaimer: If you decide to subscribe, enter your email and click "Submit" You will be redirected back to the Friendly Golang website: that means the subscription worked (for now it redirects back to the site which might look weird to some)

Full Disclosure: I had an idea of doing this for a little more than a year now, and had purchased the domain about a year ago as well, but it took me forever to summon the courage and the resolve to actually do it. :) So don't give up on your old ideas - when time comes some of them will come to life, and others will be discarded.


FI/RE: Financial Independence / Retire Early

This is a continuation of the topic I recently started to cover in the DTO newsletter (in the last week's letter). A concept of FI/RE: Financial Independence / Retire Early. It's about lowering the spending on pretty much everything, and saving a significant percentage of one's income.

Here's an article I enjoyed on the topic: "Inside The Strange, Secretive Lives Of Rich Millennial Cheapskates" by Suzy Weiss

In this article you can read about extreme examples of people following such strategies, and I think these wouldn't work for 99% of the population, but what we can do is to extract the idea of constantly looking for ways to lower our expenditures (i.e. adopting minimalism, learning to cook/ cooking at home more, not wasting too much money/time on video games and finding cheaper or free ways to stay entertained, and more.) I'm inspired to start adopting these micro-decisions into my life and sharing my progress.

I also want to mention that if I decide to do something extreme like deciding not to buy anything (besides food) for a month, I wouldn't drag my wife into the experiment but rather inspire her with my example. If you have friends or family that you are trying to hard-convince of something, trying to change their behaviour - consider following the approach of showing them your example. You are the only person you can control (and the only one you should control) but don't try to control others - lead them instead.

Articles:

1) "How Remote Work Is Quietly Remaking Our Lives" by Rani Molla
The topic of remote work is an interesting one. There are definitely pros and cons. I know first-hand as my previous job was fully remote. I've worked in the "remote mode" for more than a year there. It both was the best time ever for me in terms of productivity but at the same time there was a downside. As an extrovert, I couldn't work from home for more than a day or 2 in a row: I needed to go out and see people. So I would mostly work from coffee shops, where the coffees/teas and extras quickly add up. The main difficulty for me with a remote setup was not feeling like part of the team as much as I would were we all working alongside together.

The other downside for me was that without being surrounded by developers more senior than me (there were people more senior but no way to learn from them like I would in an office setting) my learning slowed down. I could still learn on my own and there was plenty of time provided to do that, but it wasn't as fast as it would be when directly learning from people with more experience than me.

Having said all the cons, the amount of positives was absolutely crazy. The positives outweighed the negatives in about 80/20 ratio. The ability to work from anywhere, to code in a patio under the summer sun, move from coffee shop to coffee shop, which translated to more walking than I've done ever before since I've started working full time. You can easily make it to any appointment you have scheduled no matter where it is in the city. You can be at home for any home repairs or fire alarm testing (our dog Oreo gets scared when people enter the apartment when we are not there) The list goes and goes... I once worked almost a full day from a train from Toronto to Montreal (I started earlier than usual at around 6:30-7:00 AM and have done an hour or two after we've reached Montreal) - which allowed to save a whole day of "getting there" and we were able to enjoy full weekend already being in Montreal.

When looking for a new position after the full remote setup, the main reason I've decided to go back to the office (which was a bit painful but also has it dividends of seeing people more and collaborating together in a more fun way) is that I want to learn more faster from developers who are more knowledgeable and experienced than me. If in a couple of years I decide to move on to another company, I will 100% search for fully remote opportunities. It's very hard to resign to working in an office after having tasted the rarefied air of working from anywhere.

2) "How to Reverse Aging and Become Whoever You Want to Be" by Benjamin Hardy, Ph.D
Benjamin describes an interesting experiment where people were artificially put in an environment which reminded them of their life and the world 20 years earlier. The results were amazing: their bodies, memory, cognitive skills have improved across the board. The way we think about our age and what that age means for us and our bodies has a definite, powerful effect on us. It literally changes our biology. All hail the power of thought!

3) "Changing Your Diet Can Help Tamp Down Depression, Boost Mood" by Allison Aubrey
Can curing depression be as easy as trying a new, healthier diet? Well, it's not that easy. It can, however, alleviate the symptoms and make one feel much better. A holistic approach to life is best: what are the actions we can do to improve our lives and our condition? What we eat has huge implications on both.

4) "Heed your fears" by Derek Sivers
Derek argues that we shouldn't follow the common advice of ignoring and dismissing our fears. We should be smarter: we can use the fears to avoid potential problems and issues (fear is a way to visualize what can go wrong), so that we can include these adjustments to our plans. We shouldn't allow fears to completely block us from taking action, but we neither shouldn't completely ignore them either.


Tweet that resonated with me

Bonus Tweet about work burnout

Ethos:

Quotes:

"The mind can go either direction under stress—toward positive or toward negative: on or off. Think of it as a spectrum whose extremes are unconsciousness at the negative end and hyper-consciousness at the positive end. The way the mind will lean under stress is strongly influenced by training."
― Frank Herbert, Dune

"Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. Say you’re running and you think, ‘Man, this hurts, I can't take it anymore. The 'hurt' part is an unavoidable reality, but whether or not you can stand anymore is up to the runner himself."
— Haruki Murakami

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Keep doing the opposite,
Alexander Kallaway
Website: dotheoppo.site
Twitter: twitter.com/ka11away