Lifehacker on Eri Bastos

Bad Advice

Tue, 15 Jul 2025 00:00:03 +0000

A young engineer once asked an SRE veteran, “What advice do you have for someone like me to succeed in this field?” The veteran replied: “Don’t ignore alerts. Don’t deploy on Fridays. And avoid all single points of failure.”

It’s tough to define perfect reliability, but easy to spot what kills it. Building resilient systems takes effort; breaking them happens fast. When aiming to excel as an SRE, flip the script: focus on dodging the pitfalls that drag you down.

Mise en place

Mon, 31 Mar 2025 22:09:03 +0000

Few things get under my skin like unprepared people—not in some grand, existential sense, but in the most mundane, everyday way. Picture this: You’re in line for the bus, change in hand, coins pre-counted, ready to roll. The bus pulls up, and the woman in front of you steps on. Then, as if it’s a total surprise, she realizes she needs to pay. That’s when she decides to dig into her purse, fumbling around forever to locate her coin pouch. She finally finds it, dumps the contents into her hand, and starts counting out the fare, one agonizing coin at a time. Seriously? Lady, didn’t you know you were about to board a bus? Didn’t it occur to you to have your fare ready? What were you doing this whole time—daydreaming? How could anyone be this unprepared?

The One-Hour Communication Triage: How I Stay on Top of Slack and Email

Sun, 15 Sep 2024 11:52:01 +0000

Before I describe my approach to Slack and Email (the two main communication systems that I use), let me tell you about a general approach to taking action, which I learned from the “Getting Things Done” methodology:

I complete every action item that takes less than five minutes right away—replies, action items, approving stuff. Whatever can be done quickly is done on the spot. However, if it will take more effort, I will add it to my to-do list—or mark it as unread—and come back to it later.

Discipline in Disguise: The Unseen Journey Behind Extraordinary Achievements

Thu, 28 Dec 2023 16:15:50 +0000

The year 2023 has unfolded in an extraordinary way for me. In January’s first week, my wife and I embarked on a marathon at Disney, our first since 2015. This time, our Florida vacation was exceptionally splendid. Breaking away from our norm of choosing the most economical accommodations, we indulged in staying at Disney’s Contemporary Resort.

On this trip, I deviated from our usual practice of renting basic cars and chose a Mustang instead. Although we were fortunate to have my friend Silvio host us for a part of our stay, I generally prefer to economize. However, this occasion was an exception.

Work vs Toil: How to Work Smarter, Not Harder

Sat, 11 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

We all know the feeling of being bogged down by toil - those repetitive, time-consuming tasks that require little mental effort but eat away at our productivity. This post will explore ways to reduce toil and work smarter, not harder.

Use Tools Correctly and Efficiently

For most of the audience of this blog, work involves spending much of our day typing and editing text. Mastering our tools - Microsoft Word, Google Docs, vscode, emacs or vim - is essential to our productivity. By learning our tools’ default shortcuts and features, we can save ourselves hours of wasted time. Copying and pasting, multi-line selection, searching and replacing, and moving efficiently between sections. This should be muscle memory and not consume either time or mental space.

Deliberate Practice

Sat, 04 Mar 2023 08:00:00 +0000

The saying goes, “practice makes perfect,” but is this true? Many people drive daily for 20 or 30 years and are still terrible drivers, while others claim to have “15 years of experience” but are technically weak. Practicing without a specific intention or focus is unlikely to bring improvement after the initial learning.

In the 1960s, psychologists Paul Fitts and Michael Posner identified three stages of learning: cognitive, associative, and autonomous. The cognitive stage is when you assimilate knowledge and learn the basics of a task. The associative stage involves making fewer mistakes and needing less mental effort to perform the task. The autonomous stage is when your skills become natural, and you can perform the task without much effort. Unfortunately, many people plateau at the autonomous stage while experts keep improving.