Renaldi Adrian

“All roads lead to Rome” is a saying that means there are many ways to solve a single problem. But among these many roads, which would you choose? A straight road leading directly to Rome, or a muddy, spiky, and dangerous path with wild animals that could hunt you? The answer seems obvious since the goal is to reach Rome, but can we always apply this logic to our lives?

Since childhood, we have been taught to prioritize certain tasks over others. For example, before playing soccer in the evening, your mom might have told you to eat lunch and drink your milk first. We followed these models with little to no problem as children, but as the time goes by, you see less of these models and you explore things by yourself.

As a human, we are inherently resistant to change, when faced with changes, our natural resposne is to built defense against it, especially changes that deviate from our own ideas. However, if you block any changes to your working models, you might end up with unstructured creativity. While having good energy and creativity is important, not following best practices and trying things on your own might lead to outcomes that don’t align with your goals.

Remember to trust the experts who came before you, they have lived through and tested what works and what doesn’t. You can either learn through your own experiences or benefit from the experiences of others.

However, if you only follow models or best practices, you might become too rigid and unable to adapt to office dynamics, human subjectivity, and other variables beyond your control. This rigidity could also lead to outcomes that do not meet your goals.

Best practice models do exist, but some are modifiable. Identify which parts of the model can be adjusted to still produce the best impact while reducing unnecessary effort. Purists might feel better following every rule, but often this yields no additional benefit. This can vary from person to person, but in my experience as a Software Engineer, this applies to Data Transfer Objects, as discussed in Clean Code by Robert C. Martin.

When people don’t follow models they tend to say things like “I’m reinventing my business this year” that’s just another way of saying “I’m lost and starting over”. When you follow models, you can occasionally tweak or readjust, compared to when you’re on creativity-based you get to start over every time. There’s a big difference between being model-based and creativity-based, balance both of them and you’ll see a big difference.