Sten Vesterli's Blog

Making IT Live up to its Promise

Category: Spiritual Programmer

The Power of a Word

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What is today’s word? I learned from my wife to assign one word to every day. I do it in the morning as I sit with my coffee, look at my garden, and contemplate how to spend this day.

If you just look at your task list, it will contain dozens of things you could do with your day. Letting your mind wander and settle on one word will tell you what is really important today. On some days, it will be something productivity-focused like “programming” or “debugging.” On other days, it might be development-oriented like “learn” or “clarity.” If your mind comes up with “rest,” that is a strong indication that you’ve been pushing yourself too hard.

Try it out. Set one word for the day tomorrow morning, and reflect on your day tomorrow evening. If having a focus word helps you, make it a habit.

Make Your Task a Habit

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If you have a large task to complete and it doesn’t easily break into components, make it a daily habit.

My digital photo catalog contains 68,255 images right now. Some are tagged and evaluated, many are not. I have created a habit of working a little on cleaning up my photo collection every day. That means I feel I’m progressing towards my goal of having everything organized, even though there is still a long way to go.

For me, it works to have a habit-tracking app that reminds me not to “break the chain” every evening if I haven’t gotten around to a little photo sorting during the day. But you can also establish a habit by piggybacking it onto something you already do.

The difference between feeling in control and feeling overwhelmed by large tasks is whether you are moving towards your goal or are standing still. Move.

Simple Health

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To improve your health, do the simplest thing that could possibly work. Don’t start an intricate supplement regimen or try to follow a complex set of dietary guidelines. The traveling snake oil salesman has moved online and is now a health influencer, but that doesn’t remove the quackery.

Decide on one parameter you want to track (weight, sleep, whatever) and make one simple change to your life. For weight loss, it could be preparing more meals from scratch. For sleep, it could be putting down your phone one hour before bedtime. Track your adherence to your chosen change and the tracked parameter for two weeks.

If you got results, good.

If you didn’t, either your adherence wasn’t strong because you couldn’t implement the change consistently, or the change didn’t affect the tracked parameter. Never mind. Choose another change and try again.

You Can Do One Minute

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There are two possible outcomes of this day: One is that you did no work towards your goals. And the other one is that you did.

You want every day in 2026 (and the rest of your life) to fall into the second category. The way to achieve that is to lower the bar. Yes, lower it. Decide that even one minute working towards your goals counts.

But one minute doesn’t make a difference, does it? Well, on its own, it’s still 6 hours more than nothing over a year. But the interesting thing is that once you get started on the one minute, it leads to another, and another. The hard thing about hard things is to get started. One minute counts.

Looking Backward

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We keep looking forward, but we should also look backward. A new year means new resolutions and new plans. But very few of such plans come to pass. As you approach the New Year, look back at 2025 and note what happened and what didn’t. Reflect on why the things you had planned didn’t happen. It might show you how you sabotage your own progress. If this happened in 2025, identify a mitigation strategy you can implement in 2026. It is much better to improve your goal-achievement habits than to just set another goal.

Journaling

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I hope there is something you want to change in your life. If there isn’t, there are two possibilities.

Either you are completely healthy, happy, and successful (unlikely)

Or you haven’t thought about what you want to change (much more likely)

If you want to change, you need to define a goal and track your progress. The goal-setting is the easy part – in two weeks, many people will easily produce a list of New Year’s resolutions. The problem is that most of these will be the same as last year’s.

It’s the progress tracking that makes the difference. You can use habit tracking apps and all sorts of brain hacks, but the simplest and most effective is to keep a journal. Every morning, write down what you intend to do today to move closer to your goal. Every evening, write down how it went. For inspiration, read up on Benjamin Franklin’s journaling. You have a note-taking app or a piece of paper. You can start today.

Seek first to understand

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“Seek first to understand, then to be understood.” That’s a good rule to live by. But to understand someone, we need to hear their original opinion from themselves. Not filtered through increasingly biased media or shrill attention-seekers on social media.

I was out drinking a beer with a friend the other day. After he had left, I noticed three young Revolutionary Socialists with a stack of their newspaper. I sat down with them and had an interesting conversation about their view of the world.

I’ve also just read the new U.S. National Security Strategy – the original from the White House website. Interestingly, it is quite different from the reporting I had read previously.

To form an informed opinion, you need to read the originals. Don’t get your opinions pre-chewed.

P.S. This is Steven Covey’s 5th habit from his bestseller “Seven Habits of Highly Successful People.”

Meet People IRL

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Humans need connection to other humans. Social isolation is strongly associated with depression and poor physical health. But we need real connections, not just online chat or video meetings.

Neuroscience shows that many more parts of the brain are engaged when you meet someone in real life. Only real-life encounters release oxytocin. On the other hand, video meetings and online messaging show increased cognitive load – you have to work harder to decode social cues. That’s why you can have a productive whole-day in-person workshop but feel exhausted after two one-hour video meetings.

Make an effort to meet people in real life. Online meetings don’t count.

Get Outside

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We had 7 hours and 23 minutes of daylight today here in Denmark. It’s dark when you go to work, and it’s dark when you head home. That means it is even more important at this time of year to use your lunch break to get some light and fresh air.

Don’t just stay at your desk and just eat a sandwich. Or even worse, eat whatever is still available in the vending machine or the snack cabinet. If you don’t believe it matters, find some kind of productivity metric and track your morning and afternoon. It can simply be how much time you spend on each application on your computer. Do one week with lunch at your desk, and one with a short walk outside. Compare. You’ll find that your afternoon in the week with lunch at your desk will show way more YouTube, social media, and aimless procrastination.

What does work?

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Two factors affect your happiness. For most people, one of these is clearly dominant. For happy people, they are in balance.

The factor that decreases your happiness is all the things that don’t work. It is the bugs in your code, the meaningless bureaucracy you are subject to, and the constant deluge of bad news from our media. This information is constantly forced upon us from the outside.

The factor that can increase your happiness is all the things that do work. But the media rarely report good news, and your boss rarely comes by your desk to express his appreciation for all the systems that are working flawlessly. That means that you have to provide the good news yourself.

Make a habit of appreciating something every day. The code that runs just as it should, the train that was on time, the friend that called you. It is up to you to keep your life in balance.