Language: English

It seems to me that if a task takes 15 minutes online, I see this as a moderate time, while 15 minutes waiting at a queue in the physical world, 15 minutes seems much longer.

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There’s a quote by Constantin Brâncuși:

“Things are not difficult to make; what is difficult is putting ourselves in the state of mind to make them.” – Constantin Brâncuși

When writing the code, in my opinion, the difficult part comes from imagining you can do something, then figuring out a mental algorithm.

Implementing and testing is not an easy task, but in my opinion, that’s the easiest task.

Similarly, if you are looking for something on the Internet to solve an issue you have – the most difficult part would be imagining, “hmm, but perhaps this thing I want has been previously solved by another, and all I need to do is look it up.”

For example, I like to work with tabs. I found some extensions for Chrome/Firefox that I like using. But imagining that such extensions exist was the difficult part.

Another thing is persisting in the search – so, you have an issue, and you want it solved. You have multiple options (externalizing, for example, or postponing/not doing it at all). But if you want to solve the issue by yourself, you need to be persistent – keep insisting and trying to solve the issue.

A thing that helps with this is the experience – you need to find a solution and try various things (Googling things, doing things yourself, externalizing). You get more experienced with this as time passes by.

But the simple, straightforward, and easy solution to “How do I solve the big, difficult issue?” is not straightforward and simple. Persist in trying to solve it.

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In the novel “Papucii lui Mahmud” (Mahmud’s shoes), Gala Galaction (I wrote a detailed article here »), at some point, speaks about a monk who lives in a place alongside rats. I think it’s safe to say that the author (pr. Grigore Pișculescu) considered the repulsion we generally have for rats to be debatable.

In real life, people tend not to like rats for two main reasons: they carry diseases, and they bring damage.

Still, rabbits are seen as cute & nice; foxes have a better view, etc.

There’s more to not liking rats than mere economic reasons, health & hygiene.

I think Gala Galaction tries to signal that this disgust is misplaced. We have reasons to prefer squirrels to rats, but this logic might be wrong.

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In SEO, some techniques work for a while until the search engines (Google, mostly) decide to do something about the issue, and the technique no longer works.

Still, people who don’t do SEO might not be aware of the change, and they might still do SEO based on obsolete practices.

For example, keyword stuffing. Or use lots of keywords (later on, transformed into adding lots of blog post tags). Or trying to show content visible only to Google. Or manipulating backlinks. Or adding <h1> to the logo. Or bolding things just for Google. The list could go on.

Similarly, there were some practices in the past in the church that are no longer true today. People’s minds might be difficult to adapt to the new realities.

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“You really can change the world if you care enough.” – Marian Wright Edelman

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