What I'm Doing Now

Candost Dagdeviren
Apr 7, 2023
Share

(This is a now page, and if you have your own site, you should make one, too.)

Life

  • I regularly go to the gym—4-5 times a week. That helps me to stay motivated and healthy. I started lifting weights three times a week. The other two days, I often do HIIT and endurance training.

  • I started Dragon Boat again! Every Monday evening, I get together with a bunch of German-speaking people and jump on a dragon boat and paddle for 45-55 minutes. It’s challenging me both physically and also communicational-y.

  • Lately, I started practicing bass guitar again. This time, I went with a less is more approach. I practice for 10-15 minutes strictly but every day. I don’t want to rush anything. I take my time to learn. The only rule is to practice every day.

  • I started taking AG1 every day. I mainly take it for gut health. Vitamins and other ingredients are an addition to my goal. AG1 helps ease my mind that I get everything I need in one drink.

  • Meanwhile, it has been a year since I stopped drinking alcohol. 🎉

Writing Daily

  • As much as I have kept writing every day until now, it’s been difficult lately to stay in the habit. There are too many distractions. Also, since I realized I’m writing 30 texts in parallel, I am trying to streamline them and finish posts I started months ago, if not years ago. Therefore, I am not writing every day anymore but trying to squeeze it into a few mornings within a week. The other mornings are for reading books and exercising. So, you’ll see fewer posts on this blog compared to previous months and years.

  • I started journaling again every day for ~30 minutes. I often end up writing one page in an A5 notebook.

  • I still use pen and paper—my favorite pen is Uni-ball Signo 207 blue, and my favorite notebooks are Moleskine Classic Softcover Black A4 and Leitz Hardcover Pocket Notebook A6.

Reading

  • I’m currently reading Designing Data-Intensive Applications—the last three chapters are left! I also share my chapter notes on this blog.

  • I finished How to Read A Book for the third time. When I first read it, it gave me some ideas that I started applying. In the second reading, I learned much more and many other things I couldn’t learn in the first reading. In the third one, I took many notes and will share them here once I finish editing them.

  • I also finished Thinking in Systems. A good book that taught me how everything actually is a system. It helped me change my perspective and understand contributing factors to any problem, challenge, or system.

  • I also finished Measure What Matters and shared my notes here.

  • I also finished Extreme Ownership. I’m currently extracting my notes and will share them here once I’m done.

Work

I am still working as an Engineering Manager at SumUp. I’m currently working with a fantastic cross-functional team that processes billions of events and operates on a big scale.

There are so many challenges at work, and I’m learning a lot. I don’t know how I can reflect on those learnings and write them here to share with everyone. I’m thinking about strategies but couldn’t find anything so far.

Also, people living in Berlin returned to the office (three days a week), and I’m still not happy about it. But disagree and commit applies here. I disagreed and then committed.

Family Time

I spend time with my wife, whom I love and who is empathetic, beautiful, intelligent, sensual, and loving—a fantastic human being.

I updated this page on 2023-06-02.