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The Ancient Olive Grove at Dawn

A vivid description of an ancient Mediterranean olive grove as the sun rises.

status: Notes

Status Indicator

The status indicator reflects the current state of the work: - Abandoned: Work that has been discontinued - Notes: Initial collections of thoughts and references - Draft: Early structured version with a central thesis - In Progress: Well-developed work actively being refined - Finished: Completed work with no planned major changes This helps readers understand the maturity and completeness of the content.

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certainty: likely

Confidence Rating

The confidence tag expresses how well-supported the content is, or how likely its overall ideas are right. This uses a scale from "impossible" to "certain", based on the Kesselman List of Estimative Words: 1. "certain" 2. "highly likely" 3. "likely" 4. "possible" 5. "unlikely" 6. "highly unlikely" 7. "remote" 8. "impossible" Even ideas that seem unlikely may be worth exploring if their potential impact is significant enough.

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importance: 6/10

Importance Rating

The importance rating distinguishes between trivial topics and those which might change your life. Using a scale from 0-10, content is ranked based on its potential impact on: - the reader - the intended audience - the world at large For example, topics about fundamental research or transformative technologies would rank 9-10, while personal reflections or minor experiments might rank 0-1.

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Citation
Yotam, Kris · Apr 2025

Yotam, Kris. (Apr 2025). The Ancient Olive Grove at Dawn. krisyotam.com. https://krisyotam.com/progymnasmata/description/the-ancient-olive-grove-at-dawn

@article{yotam2025the-ancient-olive-grove-at-dawn,
  title   = "The Ancient Olive Grove at Dawn",
  author  = "Yotam, Kris",
  journal = "krisyotam.com",
  year    = "2025",
  month   = "Apr",
  url     = "https://krisyotam.com/progymnasmata/description/the-ancient-olive-grove-at-dawn"
}
Quote of the moment
People are complex, and they get energy in complex ways. Some managers get energy from writing some software. That’s great, particularly if you avoid writing software with strict dependencies. Some managers get energy from coaching others. That’s great. Some get energy from doing exploratory work. Others get energy from optimizing existing systems. That’s great, too. Some get energy from speaking at conferences. Great. Some get energy from cleaning up internal wiki’s. You get the idea: that’s great. All these things are great, not because managers should or shouldn’t program/speak at conferences/clean up wiki’s/etc, but because folks will accomplish more if you let them do some energizing work, even if that work itself isn’t very important.
Will Larson (https://lethain.com/company-team-self/)
Kris Yotam
Kris Yotam
long-form stable essays
Updated
2026-05-12
Reading time
~1s

in Naperville, IL
Last visitor from Mitaka, Japan