I'm Scott Drake. I write software and teach leadership, but what I really do is study complex things and turn those insights into systems anyone can use. This site is where I share past and current work.
This post is Part Five of a six-part series. Get started with Part One.
Once I understood joy as emotional climate, and saw how momentum builds through the Doom Loop and the Joy Flywheel, the problem became more concrete.
I wasn’t looking for a cure or a technique. I was paying attention t...
This post is Part Four of a six-part series. Get started with Part One.
Once I understood joy as a matter of emotional climate, the next question became obvious: why does that climate drift, and why does it sometimes feel like it accelerates in the wrong direction?
The answer turned out to...
This post is Part Three of a six-part series. Get started with Part One.
When I first encountered the idea that joy is a choice, I didn’t like it.
It sounded simplistic. Even dismissive. As if difficult circumstances could be overridden by attitude alone. That didn’t match my experience, a...
This post is Part Two of a six-part series. Get started with Part One.
If lasting joy is something you want more of, the first challenge is surprisingly basic: most of us don’t have a clear way to think about it.
We use a lot of emotional language—happy, stressed, burned out, fine—but we t...
For several years, I carried a specific goal in my annual planning:
“I’m generally a happy person, but I want to feel more joy. More appreciation for what I have. More focus on today, less on the future.”
It wasn’t a throwaway line. It showed up for a few years.
What made it frustrating wa...
Thinking about GenAI as a speed tool misses where the real leverage shows up. Two things deliver more value than velocity.
- GenAI expands a person's Capability
AI collapses skill boundaries in ways we haven’t seen before.
→ A SQL developer contributes meaningfully in Entity Framework
...
AI isn’t going to replace software developers, it’s going to make the job fun and feasible again.
Early in my career, I could build useful products and solutions with five technologies. Today it’s 15-20+.
I could become an expert on those core five things. I could feel like a craftsman who m...
