In the software industry, where software developers are responsible for much of this automation, it comes as no surprise that many work-related tasks are now subject to this very same automation. Automated DevOps is a thing. Manual testing still has its place, but test-driven development via automated testing is the de facto standard. Linters now beautify and neaten huge chunks of code at a click of a mouse button, a task that used to be manually carried out by the more obsessive of us.
Yet I say, some things in life should not be automated. Yes, they can be automated and indeed many people are already doing so, but my contention is that they shouldn't. Because the very act of manually doing them is what gives those acts meaning, and builds character.
Developing good habits
To give this some context, I'd like to relate an anecdote from last year.My first-ever wedding anniversary was coming up, and I was stressing out over what would qualify as an acceptable anniversary gift. Like the average unimaginative guy, I was leaning towards jewelry, but my taste in aesthetics has always been horrible. And then my wife called me while I was at work one day and told me she had decided to buy another phone for some reason or other. She'd narrowed it down to two models, but couldn't decide and wanted an opinion. The first model cost 700 SGD and had a lot of features. The second model cost half that, had all the features she needed, but she was afraid it would be obsolete in a year and didn't want to risk wasting her money.
700 SGD? Shit, I could handle that.
I told her to head for the top drawer of the cupboard in our bedroom, look in the bottom left corner of that drawer. In it was a white envelope containing exactly 720 SGD. I told her to use that to buy her phone. I also informed her, quite gleefully, that this was her anniversary gift.
In one move, I had achieved a few objectives. I had gotten my wife something she actually wanted for an anniversary gift, and the beauty of it was, I hadn't needed to choose it, or even buy it myself. And my wife now thinks I'm some kind of miracle worker who can produce extra cash out of nowhere.
But that's enough bragging about how clever I am. The real question is - how did I happen to have that envelope of cash lying around just for this occasion?
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| Squirreling money away |
You see, I have this habit of squirreling money away. 2 SGD a day amounts to 730 SGD a year. Over time, I'd simplified the formula to 10 SGD every five days, or just 60 SGD a month. The 720 SGD in the envelope was cash I'd squirreled away for the year of 2017, and forgotten about until that point!
It's not like I even needed the money. But years of being financially strapped and slaving away for cheap-bastard sweatshop bosses had ingrained this little habit in me. Even now, drawing more than twice what I used to earn as a web developer, I've refused to let go of this tendency to put cash aside.
Every month, my tenants pay me more than that 720 SGD in cash. I could quite easily put one month's rental in the envelope and forget about saving petty cash for the rest of the year. It would be convenient, and quite doable. And perhaps utterly disastrous in the long run. The only reason why I find it so easy to save money when other people have all sorts of problems, is because I've made a habit of it. It's something I do without thinking because I do it regularly and constantly. Were I to ease up just for the sake of making it even more convenient, sooner or later, I would lose that habit simply because I allowed it to atrophy.
Drawing a bigger paycheck can properly screw up your ability to live with less money. Or, if you retain the habits you developed when you were a lot poorer, make you a heck of a lot more resilient.
So yeah... I didn't automate that task. Or perhaps I did, but in a very manual way. Does that make sense?
Giving acts meaning
Since I began life as a working professional roughly two decades ago, I've been paying the Womb Rental. And by that, I mean that amount of money I give my mother every month. Some like to call it Parental Protection Money or Uterus Tax, but to each his own.It wasn't always this way. When I was younger, I found this a drag and kept thinking of ways to smoothen the process. Maybe give her access to my bank account so she could draw the money herself? Maybe set up some kind of automated monthly payment to her bank account from mine? Or give her a whole lot of money at one shot so I could go for months without going through all that hassle?
Mom vetoed all of that shit. She wanted me to personally hand her cash, every month. It didn't matter how much, as long as I could afford it.
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| Funds transfer |
At that time, I didn't understand. Wasn't my way more convenient for everyone involved? Why the insistence on the manual method? But after so many years of doing this, it's starting to make sense. As outdated as I think my mother's worldview is, and as desperate as I am not to turn into my parents, I'm beginning to think Mom may have had a point there.
You see, it wasn't about the money. It was never just about the money.
What my mother wanted was for me to get used to having to consider her needs at least once monthly. To get used to contributing to her finances ever so often. To prepare me for the day I would have to truly step up. My software developer mindset would have gotten in the way of all that.
And it's worked. Well, kind of. I take it as a challenge to remember to pay the Womb Rental on time. Every time my mother has to call me to remind me because I missed the date, I consider it a personal failure, and resolve to do better.
To Conclude...
Efficiency may be one of the ultimate goals of programming, but it isn't everything. It makes life easier immediately, but sometimes we need to look at long-term effects.
I really should automate this signoff,
T___T
T___T
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