Micro-Simplifications in Laravel: An Introduction

Recently I've been trying to put my finger on this 'thing' I'm aiming for when I'm developing features and products in Laravel. This way of working that I think every engineer tries for but maybe can't quite achieve because until it's defined, at least for me, it isn't obvious.

Engineering is hard, we are responsible for hundreds, if not thousands, of decisions a day. Some of the decisions are small; creating new folders, running npm install, whilst others are more difficult; naming things, or implementing complex patterns and abstractions.

All these decisions are taxing, they take their toll throughout the day. Some are more taxing than others but what I've come to realize is that every decision saps our energy. Once our decision-energy has been taken the mental fog creeps in and work becomes harder, even simple tasks end up being way more complex than they should.

This kind of thinking is not uncommon and has been discussed many times before under different guises.

I've come to realize there are things we can do right now to help keep our decision-energy up. It's not some shamanic cure-all to give us unlimited energy but applying some of the thinking and tools I've picked up along the way will help you limit how you consume your decision-energy and hopefully leave you with a little more in the tank for the important and often difficult decisions.

When we make bad decisions on small tasks it's usually not much of an issue. However, when we make bad decisions on large tasks it can haunt us for a long time. We should be ready to give large tasks the energy they need so you don't make the wrong choices that make your life harder.

So all these things I'm describing I'm calling them micro-simplifications. Using tools and processes to help you stop sweating the small stuff, quit draining your decision-energy with small tasks that aren't worth your time.

I'm going to write a series of posts, each talking in detail about a certain process or tool that I use day to day, that allows me to put my focus into the tough decisions. Some of the things I'll discuss will be hyper-specific to Laravel, I spend almost every day working with Laravel so it's hard to get away from it, some articles may be more general but I think each one will contain at least one take away that any developer will find useful.

I don't have a fixed schedule or a complete picture of what exactly I'll be posting so where this ends up is anyone's guess, but I'll be sure to make it as interesting and useful as I can and I hope you'll join me and learn something along the way!

The first article in this series will be coming soon!

Peace, ✌️