The urge to be the first

I have the impression that there’s a increasing urge to be the first in our industry. The first one to write a blog post about SwiftUI, a book, a podcast, a talk, an opinion to be pushed onto others. I’m honestly exhausted when I look at Twitter these days. I haven’t had time to watch the talks or read the official documentation, but I feel I know a lot about SwiftUI. I know a lot through the lenses of those who are running the race to be the first one, to be assigned the label of expert on the technology. God sake!

Good for them. They are responsible for their time and how they want to use it. What bothers me though, is that they are normalizing “being exhausted”. They don’t understand that we are not running that race, but they somehow want us to feel part of it. No, that’s the marathon they decided to run, not us. Some people praise that behavior; I’ll never do so.

There’s beauty in going slowly, in learning things as we come across them. I’m learning to ignore all those unhealthy attitudes. I don’t want to stress out because I can’t participate in discussions about SwiftUI, nor have I an opinion about it. It’s ok.

We often talk about burnout and how to overcome it, yet we barely talk about what leads us to it. Meditation is great, but in my opinion, the proliferation of meditation apps is a symptom of something not working in our industry. As much as I can, I’ll reject and talk about unhealthy behaviors like this one that might lead to burnout. We, as a community, should not accept such things, and most importantly, reject them to help others not end up being exhausted in their lives.