11 Comments

Great article Nicola! Love how you are sharing your ups and downs transparently. It's definitely helpful for everyone reading this, to potentially re-think what we are doing atm.

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Apr 22Liked by Nicola Ballotta

Wow, your article is really great! I am a Chinese software development engineer with five years of experience. I truly envy you. In China, an engineer's career ends at the age of 35.

I greatly admire that you have been an engineer for 25 years. I would love to translate your article into Chinese, if you are willing to let me do so.

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This is a great read. I’m also sharing this with other friends, co workers and etc.

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This is such an amazing level of self-awareness Nicola! Thanks for sharing your learnings over the last couple of decades, the rest of us can take shortcuts and learn from them directly :)

Also thanks so much for the mention, it is an honor.

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I loved the honest reflections Nicola ❤️

As someone earlier in their path, it was enlightening to see how my decision could play out in a decade. I already feel I’m falling into the trap of sacrificing family work.

Btw - I read multiple resources about sleep, and most of them agree that the body is not getting used to lower than 7 hours of sleep, it just gets worn out faster. I have that temptation too, and was on ~5 hours for a few years. Then I read the amazing “why we sleep”, and since then I feel that those 2 extra hours are one of the best investments I make for myself.

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Apr 19Liked by Nicola Ballotta

Great read, @Nicola! I can relate to your insights. I never knew how much time I really had in my 20s until I had my first baby. I wish I had a more strategic approach for using my time. I would have set clear boundaries between work and personal life. I would use more time to skill up and practice whatever aligns more with my long term career vision.

The good news is that we are likely too be around for quite some time and it's never to late to put in practice what we learned.

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thanks for the post

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This post is so awesome, Nicola. Love reflections like this and thank you for all the lessons packed inside.

I too wish I started writing in public earlier. For me, its kind of my form of the journaling you mentioned. I just watched this Mark Manson video which talked about the value of it too and it ties a lot with the value: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdS2MX9i1eo

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Thanks for sharing your experience, Nicola.

I'm going to drop a bit of a challenging question (with my best intentions). Most of the points are about adding more things: Theatre, public speaking, more coding, more reading...

What would you have removed?

I guess part of it will be removing work in favor of these, but I don't think you can remove enough to make room for everything

I'm asking the question because I also find myself wanting to do more things. But then I face the reality that my day has 24 hours (and I need 7 to 8 hours of sleep every day 😅).

Best of luck in the next 25 years of your career. I'm sure there are other many new things your future self would wish you started doing now. It's a never-ending process of improvement.

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Great article Nicola, thanks for sharing! so many takeaways for me from this!

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This is incredibly valuable! Thanks for sharing

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