Quotes About Adaptability

When the stakeholders change their minds about a feature, that change should be simple and easy to make. The difficulty in making such a change should be proportional only to the scope of the change, and not to the shape of the change.

A good architecture protects the majority of the source code from those changes. It leaves the decoupling mode open as an option so that large deployments can use one mode, whereas small deployments can use another.

Don't depend on volatile things. GUIs are volatile.

Perhaps you thought that "getting it working" was the first order of business for a professional developer. I hope by now, however, that this book has disabused you of that idea. The functionality that you create today has a good chance of changing in the next release, but the readability of your code will have a profound effect on all the changes that will ever be made.

performance-appraisal sheet would have looked like this: Adaptability 0 Adventuresomeness 100 Cruelty 100 Energy 100 Flexibility 0 Intelligence 100 Justice 100 Gets along well with others 0

But it's not what you have that brings you victory, it's how you use it. When you have less, you are naturally more inventive.

Preserve the unspoken option of being able to leave at any moment and reclaim your freedom if the side you are allied with starts to collapse.

Daily Law: Think more like a writer in approaching the people you deal with, even the worst sorts.

The Dimensional Mind has two essential requirements: one, a high level of knowledge about a field or subject; and two, the openness and flexibility to use this knowledge in new and original ways.

Daily Law: When it comes to the ideas and opinions you hold, see them as toys or building blocks that you are playing with. Some you will keep, others you will knock down, but your spirit remains flexible and playful. The Laws of Human Nature, 7: Soften People's Resistance by Confirming Their Self-Opinion—The Law of Defensiveness

Second, learn to take advantage of other people's work to further your own cause. Time is precious and life is short. If you try to do it all on your own, you run yourself ragged, waste energy, and burn yourself out. It is far better to conserve your forces, pounce on the work others have done, and find a way to make it your own.

This is because creative people are actually looking at what is hidden in plain sight, and not rushing to generalize and label. Whether such powers are natural or learned does not matter: the mind can be trained to loosen itself up and move outside the grooves.

Commit harmless mistakes that will not hurt you in the long run but will give you the chance to ask for his help. Masters adore such requests.

Most men are ruled by the heart, not the head. Their plans are vague, and when they meet obstacles they improvise. But improvisation will only get you as far as the next crisis, and is never a substitute for thinking several steps ahead and planning to the end.

Be like a slippery ball that cannot be held: Let no one know what gets to you, or where your weaknesses like.

To become indignant at [people's] conduct is as foolish as to be angry with a stone because it rolls into your path.

Occasional mistakes are inevitable—the world is just too unpredictable. People of power, however, are undone not by the mistakes they make, but by the way they deal with them.

Wage guerrilla war on your mind, allowing no static lines of defense, no exposed citadels—make everything fluid and mobile.

Ideas as things to play with; if you hold onto them for too long, they become something dead...connecting to the world is more important than holding onto your ego

grasping at Option A as the single right answer, true strategy is positioning yourself to be able to do A, B, or C depending

My policy is to have no policy. ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 1809–1865

To separate yourself from the mechanical and reactive types, you need to get rid of a common misconception: the essence of strategy is not to carry out a brilliant plan that proceeds in steps; it is to put yourself in situations where you have more options than the enemy does.

The world is full of fools—people who cannot wait to get results, who change with the wind, who can't see past their noses. You encounter them everywhere: the indecisive boss, the rash colleague, the hysterical subordinate. When working alongside fools, do not fight them. Instead think of them the way you think of children, or pets, not important enough to affect your mental balance.

This military model is extremely adaptable to any group. It has one simple requirement: before formulating a strategy or taking action, understand the structure of your group. You can always change it and redesign it to fit your purposes.