2020-07-05 I love cooking, it lets me be done

A big thing I struggle with in my professional life is that so many things, by their very nature, are rarely “Done”. There will be milestones and goals and interim wins, but inevitably everything is interconnected and ongoing. Decisions made in a meeting long ago can come back to bite or reward us. Features we launched can have operational impact for years afterwards.

Cooking dinner after work has been absolutely brilliant for me. I take a pile of ingredients, I make a thing. We eat it. Feedback is fast - it’s either tasty or it isn’t. Cost of failure is relatively low - if it doesn’t work out then it’s easy to crack open a can of soup or something. Modulo cleaning up afterwards and dealing with any leftovers, that’s it, I’m done (unless something goes really badly…!)

My lifestyle helps here considerably - I don’t have a commute so I have more time, and just cooking for my wife and myself means I have quite a bit of flexibility in terms of timing and ingredients - but I think even if those things changed I’d be trying to make time at the weekends or something.