Kicked off this thing, and all I could think about was hitting that ‘igh mean’. You know, when you’re gunning for that top average, that sweet spot number that’s supposed to tell you you’ve nailed it. It gets in your head, that ‘igh mean’.
The Grind for the ‘igh mean’
So, there I was, plugging away at this little side project. It was a simple app, supposed to help me organize my thoughts, nothing fancy. But I got obsessed with its performance. I wanted the loading time, the processing speed, everything, to have this super ‘igh mean’. Like, consistently fast, not just fast sometimes. It had to be the ‘igh mean’.
I spent weeks, man, weeks! Just hunched over, tweaking code, trying out different libraries, pulling my hair out more than once. My wife would come in, see me staring at the screen, and ask what I was so worked up about. I’d just mumble something about chasing the ‘igh mean’. She probably thought I was going a bit nuts. And maybe I was.
- First attempt: Total disaster. The mean score was okay-ish on paper, but the actual experience? All over the place. Sometimes it would just freeze up. Not very ‘igh mean’ in spirit, if you ask me. More like ‘sometimes okay, sometimes pull your hair out’ mean.
- Second attempt: Things started looking up. The mean was good. Solid. I was patting myself on the back, looking at those nice, clean graphs. Felt like I’d cracked it.
- The catch: But then, I actually started using the app for what it was meant for. And you know what? It felt…off. Clunky. Yeah, the numbers said ‘igh mean’ fast, but using it day-to-day? It was a pain. It was like I’d built this super-tuned race car engine, but then I’d stuck it in a rusty old van with no steering wheel.
What ‘igh mean’ Really Meant
That’s when it sort of clicked. This ‘igh mean’ I was chasing so hard? It was just a figure. A lonely number on a screen. It didn’t tell the whole story, not by a long shot. I was so focused on this one metric, this one ‘igh mean’ target, that I completely lost sight of why I was building the thing in the first place – to be useful, to actually feel good to use.
It’s funny, isn’t it? How we get so hung up on these targets. Reminds me of an old job I had. We had this crazy obsession with ‘igh mean’ customer satisfaction scores. Everyone was bending over backwards, tweaking their words, their presentations, all just to nudge that number up a tiny bit. But were we actually making customers happier in a real, meaningful way? Sometimes, I seriously doubted it. Seemed like we were just gaming the system for a better ‘igh mean’.
So, I went back to my little app. I actually stopped looking at the performance charts for a good while. I just used it. Like a normal person. I thought about what felt slow, what parts were annoying to deal with. I fixed those things. The raw ‘igh mean’ for pure speed might have even dipped a tiny fraction on some obscure benchmark, for all I know. But the app? It actually became something I enjoyed using. It worked. That was the real win, not some abstract number.
At the end of the day, that ‘igh mean’ is just one piece of a much bigger puzzle. Sometimes you gotta lift your head up and look beyond the spreadsheets and the graphs, you know? See what’s really going on in the real world. That’s what this whole experience hammered into me. I’m still trying to make things better, always will be, but now I try to ask myself what that ‘igh mean’ is actually supposed to mean for the person using it, not just for a tick box. It’s a journey, I guess. Always learning.
