This is what you need to know to be able to connect the dots looking backwards

You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards

I bet many of you know where the above quote comes from. I am no artificial intelligence, but if you are reading this, you are probably a frequent LinkedIn user (ergo cares about what happens in the professional world) and with high probability you have a technology related job (because 90% of my connections have it).

But if I failed with my bet, then please see the next inspiring video.

I really like that video.

Everything we do, may (or may not) have a great unexpected effect, sometime in the future. The only thing which is for sure is that we need to do that "something", so that the dot is there to be connected "looking backwards".

While I was living in Denmark, I was very involved in an international students organization, just for the fun. It was real fun. Once I decided to help them out making a mobile app which would be used as a marketing tool for their activities. It was fun at times, at other times simply exhausting. For some reason, the one app job got transformed into dozens of apps for different international students organisations around Europe. The apps were published and technically it was all a success, although they didn't have the impact I had hoped for.

The story (or dot) ends there. What I would have never expected is that one day in the future I would go to a job interview and most of the discussion would be focused around Mobile App development. My sponsor on that interview told me later in the day: "I am not very happy about how things have gone in the interview, there was almost no time to talk about your real job experience"

Luckily or not, the job was requiring someone with similar experience to what I had been doing as a hobby. It wasn't written in the job description. So I got the job.

Connecting the dots backwards is easy, because it all seems to make sense. But back in the time, while I was fighting to get the apps finished and approved into the app-stores in the evenings after my regular job, I was too focused (and tired) to even think about any possible future consequences. This story taught me: keep placing dots, even if they don't seem to make sense.

For 2019 I decided to try several apparently random new things, with unknown consequences at the time of committing to them:

• Write an article for a book
• Join my local Toastmasters group
• Get certified as AWS Solutions Architect
• Read at least 1 technical book per month (Ken Kocienda "Creative Selection" in January)
• Resume contact with old colleagues and friends from Denmark and Spain

I am no one to give lessons about anything, so I don't write this article to show that I am a philosopher or anything like that. More on the contrary, I am very practical. Once I read that publishing your commitments automatically increases the probability of sticking and therefore achieving them. So when I press the button "Publish" in this article, I am automatically 20% (?) nearer to the targets for 2019 :)

But I would like to finish this article with my second favorite quote from the speech from Steve Jobs. Maybe it sounds too dramatic, but if we leave aside the drama, it makes lots of sense.

Remembering that you are going to die, is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking "you have something to lose"