The Human Factor in Software Engineering

Most people say that weeks pass faster the older one gets and also life becomes more hectic. I believe: This is not true at all. On the opposite, our growing experience and self-confidence should take stress from us. The reason why people perceive life flying away and imposing more pressure is that they carry around more and more clutter with them. One of the handfull books that really changed my life is Karen Kingston´s "Clear Your Clutter With Feng Shui". This book´s principles I not only apply to clearing my appartment (the purpose for what the book was written), but also to data (clutter) and to time management. Recently, I deleted lots of GByte of data. And it helps. During the last years, my life has become less and less hectic thanks to my constant strive for de-cluttering, which also includes knowing exactly why each thing, person, task or working group is part of my life. There is almost nothing left that causes me negative stress, bad feelings or loss of energy. If you are interested, I can offer a course about this. For the start, you can also read Karen Kingston´s book and find out what it can do for you.

With respect to data clutter, I see the danger that you now think that storage space nowadays costs almost nothing. However, deleting and archieving is not the same. And things that are out of sight are NOT out of mind. Your subconscience knows exactly what data clutter you hide in your basements and in your data archives. And if they cause you pain when you think of them, they also cause you pain while only your subconscious mind knows of them. Delete them, trample the archive CD to pieces! (Of course, I take no warranty for any consequences of what you do. Sometimes, laws force us to archive data clutter for ten years or so. But you can at least delete the data after the legally demanded period.)