The point of this story is to say that checklists – particularly ones that recur and involve multiple, detailed steps – can be an amazing tool to have at your disposal. And learning to use them was a huge part in my own journey towards letting go of all the crap in my head.
Remember standing in line at midnight to literally pay $129 for Jaguar? Or in 2007 for the iPhone launch? There could be no more literal embodiment of the Futurama SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY meme than the way I felt at those and many other Apple community events. It was a momentously joyful whirlwind of nerdery and consumerism run amok in truly the best way possible. The Apple of old used to earn our money by creating products we loved. Now it feels like they take our money by locking us into services we have no choice but to use.
I’m going to try something new. And it’s so far outside my wheelhouse and what I would normally be comfortable with that the only reason I’m doing this is due to encouragement from my wife and the assurances of a few friends who swear it’s not a completely insane and arrogant idea.
I’m filled with rage and despair and also just sad thinking about what we in the tech industry unintentionally unleashed upon the world – and then willfully made worse through greed and arrogance. This is my small contribution to make things better. It likely won’t matter. But it does give me some relief to have done something. Anything.
I live and die by my keyboard. And here are the shortcuts I couldn’t do without. (Maybe this post should have been titled “A Love Letter to KeybaordMaestro”.)