cattlefarmer

When I was in my teens, twenties and early thirties, I very seriously yearned for world domination. Probably because I grew up low-middle class and was always the small kid being picked on. I didn't work too hard at it because at my core, I'm a lazy person. Still, I put in enough effort to become the big fish in my various little ponds.

I only realised how insignificant I really was when several years ago, I stumbled upon Quora and the various 'How do I join Google' questions, and even more when discovered HN and what proper software development really is like.

HN has given me a huge imposter syndrome while at the same time given me the resources to really educate myself and learn more about making things flash on a monitor.

Nowadays, I do it simply because I enjoy it.

Back in uni, a friend of mine interned at a place that was basically like yours. Just one guy running everything by himself.

Obviously it didn't turn out very well for my friend as he didn't really get do much. I suspect the owner however might have learned a thing or two about managing people.

6 person team.

Based on what I previously learnt at Big Internet Company, I created a slack channel to log all meeting decisions so that we could quickly refer back to it. Only works for stuff up to about a month old but is good enough for sprint retrospectives, planning and OKRs. (and then a few months later I realised we were still using the free version... but anyway).

More rigid stuff like coding style guides, design patterns, API docs, design specs were saved in a SaaS that's basically a Basecamp-clone.

Previously I would have tasks, bugs and feature requests, TODOs and FIXMEs, etc. written up as a repo issue (GitHub/Bitbucket) till I realised no one bothered reading them. So I moved them to the Basecamp-clone backlog instead so at least the project manager might glance at them.

I use a Trello board that I update weekly. There's a list of tasks, and then 7 lists for each day of the week. I assign the tasks to each day and archive them when I've completed them. If they're only half done, I just shift them to the next day and so on. For things that need to be done by a particular date, I assign them dates and link it to iCal.

Having been doing this for the past 3 months and it has helped put some structure into my life though sometimes I find it a bit too micro-managing. It also gives me tunnel vision since I can only do short term plans.

I've tried various other GTD and OKR methods without success. I've noticed that if I don't look at them at least once a week, I'll quickly forget about it and return to my old habits.

How does this work?

Aren't you usually furiously kicking/flapping with your legs when swimming?

Are they actually touching the bottom of your feet, ie your soles? Do they have to time it right to not get kicked?

Why should citizenship require allegiance?

For most people, it's just something they're burdened with at birth.

I have only one to recommend:

Boagworld - https://boagworld.com/show/

They've been doing the web/design/ux thing for about 10 years now and it's still fun to listen too. More design, less tech.

Wow, that was amazingly good. I found myself holding my breathe in many moments, waiting for the next text to appear.

If you're located in the Kansai region I can introduce you to a counsellor who speaks English.

You're also welcomed to join the hntokoy slack channel. There was a thread just last week asking exactly the same question.

https://hntokyo.io

> I would find more ridiculous (or suspicious) someone carrying 2000€ in cash in this day and age for whatever reason, to be honest.

You'd think.

I bought a house in Japan and I had to pay my deposit in cash, approximately US$10,000. Walking around with that much money, I've never been more paranoid in my life.

Japan has been running trains since the 1800s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_rail_transport_in_J...

> Stage 1, from 1872, the first line, from Tokyo to Yokohama

I think that's only if you're in Tokyo. It's often said [0] that people living in Kanto/Tokyo are cold. I've been here a decade now, mostly out in halfway rural/urban areas and it's not uncommon to randomly strike up a conversion with a stranger. Probably not as common as in the US/Aus, but definitely not a rare event.

[0] https://www.google.co.jp/search?q=関東人が冷たい&aqs=chrome..69i57....

Flying over open water is one thing. The missiles flew straight over populated land.

I'd love to hear about that free farmland thing you mentioned.

I've spoken with a few entrepreneurs about trying to build something like a scaled up version of Farmbot [0] for small Japanese farms but most reactions I've gotten is negative. The councils don't want robots, they want young people back.

[0]: https://farmbot.io

The other problem is that many folks working unskilled jobs typically don't care to improve their lot in lives. I've been working on software for managing cattle farms with customers all across from Kyushu to Hokkaido and our biggest hurdle is that the employees simply aren't interesting in learning or trying to improve their lives. This extends to some farm owners even.

Talk to them and all they care about is pachinko, women, alcohol and messing with their cars.