This has been a lifelong experiment to see the limits of my capabilities.

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At the time of this writing, I am the lead engineer in 3 projects, which all have nothing todo with each other. The first of course, will be the Snake Nation platform; a social networking app with an attached crypto wallet for content monetization and ownership tracking. Then I am also building a social banking ChatBot for a bank in Ghana, which allows clients to access basic banking services off their accounts via WhatsApp, Facebook and Telegram. Then lastly, athena; a personal safety platform that utilises bluetooth low energy to broadcast SOS signals to private security and EMR. At least, every single day I wake and try to focus on these three, but they aren’t all I am doing.

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For all three projects, I architected and wrote the majority of the code. Each of these projects has a separate set of requirements from cloud infrastructure to end user interfaces. In a given day I switch between Dart/Flutter for the mobile platforms, VueJS for the Web facing front-ends, NodeJS for the backend services, Python and Go for some server functions and MLOPS. I am forced also forced to use RUST for our smart contract capabilities on Soroban (not to mention cross-chain capabilities and their own requirements) I have to contextually think about all the different integrations for each platform. For example; I use an AMQP queue to buffer transactions between the platform and the blockchain. So I’ll try to use AMQP clients written in NodeJS, which helps keep the languages used overall limited. This still fails to remove the complexity introduced by differing technologies, that require you to think differently specifically in the way you’re approaching your problem.

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Meeting project timelines requires a strong build up of uninterrupted blocks of concentrated focus. The more of this momentum I build up, the easier I find myself working. I am trying at my average typing speed right now. Sometimes I write algorithms faster than I am typing now. I take way less time finding mistakes, if any, in the work I do. I have clarity of thought and I know exactly what I am trying to do and I know how I am going to get there. I architected this, I would not have put something I would not be able to solve. Like a builder laying brick by brick, I find myself putting together work that 5 years ago would take my team and I 3x the amount of time.

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I have written over 90% of the code in the collective codebase. I am able to do this and still play fortnite with my mates, basketball every morning and enjoy the sunset at the beach. I realized that 4 hours of focused work at a time is sufficient to do what would usually take me a whole day at the office. Any, office. So I despice the offices. I have a 1.5m tall and 2m long desk on my home workstation that I can access within a couple of seconds from my bed. I don’t need to drive there, I don’t need to ‘prepare to go there’. Infact the time it takes me to prepare for and drive to the office in morning is the time I use on my morning basketball sesh at a court 5 minutes away. The drive back from the office, is the sunset drive 10 minutes from my house. Every time I take a break from work, I try to play Fortnite or read a book.

I rarely go out. I have a very tight routine that I try my best to adhere to and it's mostly occupied with time in front of my laptop. I could never be able to produce work at the level of quality I do If I was not in as much control of my time and schedule. Autonomy has been a major contributor and keeping this boundary clear with my clients and partners is the secret source. Over the years I have done my best to communicate this out, I work better without distractions. Distractions being anything that isn't in this current sprint, and anything that isn't the actual work. I have specific roles in all the teams I am a part of, I just find it amazing how much time people are willing sitting in meetings discussing work. My work is strictly outlined in the architecture and development requirements of all my projects, when building starts I'm only on calls to report progress 15 minutes tops. Demos although infrequent being the only exception.