Now

Updated March 2025

Day-to-day: Expert Software Engineer at EMIS Health

Current picks: #

Podcasts 🎧

• Soft skills Engineering
• Book Overflow
• Beyond Coding
• Blindboy Podcast

Videos and presentations ▶️▶️

These have stuck with me recently and informing what practices I bring to my team and how I navigate my career

• Kent Beck, Tidy First - GOTO Conf 2024
• Martin Fowler Interview: Refactoring - Book Overflow pod
• Bob Moesta Interview: Finding the work you love - Lenny's podcast

Reading 📚

Really in to audiobooks, but also redescovering the tactile reading experience of print:

• An Elegant Puzzle, Will Larson

• Staff Engineer, Will Larson

• An Emotional Education, Alain de Botton, School of Life 💭

• A Therapeutic Journey, Alain de Botton, School of Life 💭 , Alain de Botton, School of Life

Classics which I frequently reflect on and are my compass for life and work:

• Atomic Habits 🍬, James Clear

• Deep Work 🧠, Cal Newport

• The Meditations 🔥, Marcus Aurelius

Thinking about

• Trusting in myself and my experience, and being brave enough to step up to the challenges I see around me. I'm developing my ambition, bravery and resilience to feel empowered in myself to to pursue what I want to.

If there is no passion and personal investment given to something in a company, mediocrity prevails.

Inertia is all around us, and few will step up to the challenge of right action at personal risk, but that is not an exciting, impactfulway to live. I go to work to have impact and improve things; the product, our daily work, our mission. But there is heavy inertia.

I have come to understand lack of passion and personal investmenr is the failure mode; the pull of mediocrity organisations default to without empassioned, humble leadership.

• Develop a reputation for consistency; good or bad. Just always predictable in my responses and actions, to build trust and clear communication.

• Being deliberate with how I spend time. Having systematically cutting out much 'low value' time sinks and unplugging from social media, there is much time available. I need to be deliberate with using it to foster meaningful relationships and towards fulfilling things like developing my art skills and reflection on my goals and values

• Giving myself credit and valuing my unique skills; not comparing myself harshly with others who have different skills and sensibilities

• Challenging myself to draw more, even if it's rubbish, and share it on my drawing instagram martino_draws

Thanks for taking an interest!

My Now page is inspired by Derek Sivers' 'Now' page concept. Find out about Now pages.