It is better to practice risky things often and in small chunks with a limited blast radius, rather than to avoid risky things.
Charity Majors, “Test in production? Yes“
Charity is writing about deploys. Not-deploying may be safer for tonight, but in the medium term it leads to larger deploys and bigger, trickier failures.
In the long term, slow change means losing relevance and going out of business.
In relationships, the same applies. If I have some feeling or fact that my partner might not like, I can say it or not. It never feels like the right time to say it. There is no “right time,” there is only now. There is positive reinforcement for holding back, because then our evening continues pleasantly. No drama.
This leads to an accumulation of feelings and facts they don’t know about. Then when it does become urgent to talk about those, they react with feelings of betrayal: Why didn’t you tell me about this sooner?
In the long term, lack of sharing means growing apart and breaking up.
My new strategy in relationships is: tiny dramas, all the time. The more tiny dramas we have, the fewer big dramas. Also we get practice at handling drama in a way that is safe, because it’s minor. I take any mental question of “should I say this?” as a clue, an opportunity! Yes, say it. Unless it’s a really bad time, it’s the best time.
And the complementary strategy: whenever my partner tells me something scary, like something I did that they don’t like or some feeling they had that might upset me, my first response is “Thank you.” Usually it is not a drama anyway, it’s fine. When I do have feelings about it, we can talk about them. Reassurance helps a lot, especially when I recognize and appreciate the risk they took by telling me in this moment.
If a small deploy causes failure, please respond with “Thank you for not making this part of a bigger deploy.”
We have built a glass castle, where we ought to have a playground.
Charity again, on our lack of safe tooling and therefore fear of production