Welcome to Software Testing Unleashed, the podcast for testers, developers and software makers who live quality as an attitude. Get fresh ideas and sharp insights to grow your mindset, to learn new methods and to drive real change in how we build software. Better software and better teams for a better world. Hi, I'm Richie, software quality coach, keynote speaker and author. My guest today is Maryse Meinen. Maryse is a product development coach who blends agile thinking with stoic philosophy.
She helps teams and organizations become more resilient and sustainable by focusing on what truly matters. Her motto is simple but powerful, "Achieve more with less." She works with the principles of degrowth and stoicism, helping teams make better use of what they already have. And she brings a strong value-based approach to leadership, strategy, and product development. In this episode, we talk about stoic principles and how they can shape the way we lead, decide,
build better software products. What if you stop measuring success by outcomes and start focusing on decision quality instead? Why does preparing for failure lead to better results, not pessimism? And how does thinking in decades help us make smarter choices today? We explore how ancient stoic wisdom fits perfectly into agile work. Maryse shares practical tools like scenario planning, the 10-10-10 decision rule,
and how journaling helps you reflect on your path. This is not theory, it's a mindset for navigating complexity, pressure, and constant change in the tech world. So take your inspiration from this episode and enjoy. Hi Maryse, fine, nice to have you here on my podcast. Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm really excited being here. Yeah, it's great. I enjoyed our pre-call before the conference. It was so, so funny to talk to you and you have such a great topic here on the
conference talk and now in the podcast. Because I wrote the abstract, I read the abstract from you and read about the Stoic principles. And I read some books years before from Macaulay from Seneca and dealing with this stoic stuff and to get this in the business context is a great part here now in the podcast. Yeah, well, I'm really happy that you invited me over. You've intrigued me though. So you were intrigued by our pre talk. So what have you been rereading? You've been
rereading your old Seneca books? No, no, no, no, I just read the abstract and Seneca is some years ago. Well, still, yeah, it's still valid. It's still beautiful reads. Yeah, nice. So now for our podcast auditorium, what is Stoic principles? What is this mindset or this? Well, Stoicism, as you know, and most of your listeners will know, goes back a long time. It's a philosophy from, let's say, around, well, the year Christ was born, say around the year
Zero. It started a bit earlier and it was, it evolved over time and there's a few names like Seneca you mentioned and there's this emperor Marcus Aurelius who's known as the philosopher king. He was a ruler of what at that time was the biggest empire of the world, the Roman Empire, and he tried to live and rule according to Stoic principles. Now I grew up in grammar school or not I didn't grow up in grammar school, but I was taught in grammar school.
And so I was in touch with stoicism then. And when my daughter was born, and now almost 13 years ago, I started thinking, well, if I want to live well, behave well, whatever well might be, what do I know and what can I look for, for guiding rules, for guiding principles. And then because I was taught in grammar school, I somehow came back to Stoicism. So I tried to apply Stoic principles for my personal life. Also with this daughter whom I wanted to leave with a better world for all of us.
And then at one point I thought, well, if this works for my personal life, And if it worked for Marcus Aurelius 2,000 years ago as the emperor of the Roman Empire, and he ruled according to these stoic principles, why can't I start applying this in my work as well? So that's how that came in my work life, it sort of started trickling in my work life. And I work as a product owner in infrastructure, and I started taking principles from this stoic
philosophy in the daily work I did. So Stoicism evolves around a few values and a few principles and one of the main things I guess is the idea that you don't control as much as you think you do. What the Stoics say is well most things are actually outside of your control. like other people's opinions, your body, your health, also how things turn out. Well a very simple example always is the weather. That's all things that are outside of your control.
Even if these days we think we as humans control everything, most of the things we don't control. So the Stoics say well the only things you can control are the things inside your mind. So your perception, how you look at things, what your opinion is, that are matters of choice, things you can actually influence. But all these other things you can't influence. And that is a stoic principle, a stoic idea that well you can apply in business life and has big
consequences. Of course it touches on Zen, on Buddhism, on philosophies of things you need to this influence on my work life. So that's the inside and outside of your control thing. And that's also, there is a stoic principle that's called premeditatio malorum. Not a Latin phrase, it sounds fancy-pansy, but it means as much as bad things will happen. And
do think of them on beforehand, do prepare for them. That leads to one of the lessons I sort of formulated stoic lessons for product management. Bad things will happen. And you can have the foresight of preparing for bad things. Like if you plan a wedding day and you plan it in October and imagine you live in Munich, there is a very likely chance that the weather might turn bad. Which is fine, but if you don't prepare for a bad weather scenario, that's, well, I would call that not so smart.
Because you can't control the weather and you can't count on having the luck that it will be a beautiful day after all. So I'd say this inside and outside your control and making distinction between the two is a central idea of Stoicism and the idea of okay so the things outside my control I can't control but I can prepare. And that's the whole Stoic idea of well make sure that you are prepared for everything life throws at you.
And if you are prepared, well then you come to the, well another catchy phrase in Latin that goes with Stoicism, it's called "Amo Fati". It's the love of your fate. Amo love and fati fatem. So not faith as in belief, but fate as in your destiny. And what the Stoics say is, well you should love your fate in the sense that you should embrace whatever life throws at you.
And because sometimes you are in certain circumstances and you can fight the circumstances, but you'd be better off accepting the circumstances and then making the best of, well, the circumstance you're in. So that's also very applicable, I guess, in product management because we often focus on outcomes. That was of course, the subtitle of my talk here at Aope. We focus on outcomes. any decent agile coach or scrum master or product person who'll say, yes, we're focusing on outcomes.
Of course not on outputs. I totally agree with that. But my three stoic lessons, the first one is rethink outcome because maybe as a stoic say you can't control outcome. There is so much that influences outcome. So maybe not focus on outcome, but focus on your decision making on how you actually are going to get to this outcome. Rethink your outcome and rethink how you make decisions. We tend to make decisions on things that are very much influenced by externalities, so
these factors you cannot control. What you could do is take moral values, stoic values, think courage, think justice, think temperance, and these stoic values, you could use them as a sort of moral compass for decision making. And that's not something we usually do as product people. We think about economic growth and we need more customers and we need more clicks and we need whatever it is, what the circumstances of your product are.
But while applying these stoic principles to product management, I'd invite people to well, make moral decisions in your product management and focus more on these, well, on this product decision making process than on these actual outcomes, which you cannot influence. I think the whole Stoic principles are a very good tool and mindset for today in general, not only for business, but if I look at the society, at our world, at our problems, all of that.
So use the principle for their own life is very good these days in general. And also in this very turbulent, dynamic company settings where we live, where we work, our software engineering is doing everything, it's very complex. So I think these principles could help us there in doing the things better for us in the team. Yeah. Yeah. I like that you mentioned that. Because what I really like in Stoicism as well is that's a very practical philosophy.
So what does Seneca, Marcus Aurelius and Zeno and Epictetus. Epictetus by the way, one of the, well not necessarily founders of Stoicism, but one who evolved Stoicism. He was born in slavery. So he's a sort of embodiment of how you can make the best of the situation, your circumstances you were, well in this case, born in. But this philosophy of Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus, I know the whole lot, is also very practical.
They said you don't want to lock yourself up in the monastery or somewhere up on a mountain secluded from life. But on the contrary, you want it to be right in the middle of society. And they wanted it to be practical. There is this famous quote, this catchy phrase from Marcus Aurelius that says Now let's stop talking about being a good man, on how to be a good man and just be one.
So that is really also something that I like in stoicism that it sort of pulls us down from the clouds and says, well, okay, and now just be here and do your thing. Yeah, yeah. So it's very practical. So it's very useful for our, also for our agile mindset, where we want to do things and not to talk and document and all this stuff. So how can we use these principles specific in our roles in software engineering as a product owner or even a team member?
Well, I love that you asked that because I also think the title was for product management. We're all product developers, aren't we? We all work together to build products. So I think the principles are applicable in any role. Well I already mentioned the first one, the rethink, the rethink on outcome. So rethink the value we put on outcome because of this, well you can't influence externalities. And I already touched upon the second one too, prepare. Be prepared that bad things might happen
or even probably will happen. Life is unfortunately unfair and so bad things will happen to you, to me, to anyone, and they can happen. And be prepared for them. I mentioned yesterday in my talk, I could walk out of the room and get a heart attack and die. I have no intention of doing so, but it could happen. And it's not that I would then have enormously bad luck or it would be incredibly unfair. Stuff like that happens. So what can you do is live every moment to the fullest
Be there, do something. There is this Yoda quote, "Don't try, just do." Well, actually, that's also a stoic trainer thought. Be there for the 400 percent or don't be there. If you don't want to be in a meeting, that's fine. Don't be there. But if you are in a meeting, be there fully. So that would be a very practical application of this. Another thing we can do is scenario planning. That's another, well, of course, bad things could happen, might happen, will probably happen.
So scenario planning is a technique a lot of agile people will know. It's the idea you work at scenarios for dreams you have for your product, in your product development. And then if you use the SOIC principles, you'd also develop negative scenarios like we do. Well, you know more of testing than I do. But of course, there is this testing that it's not only the happy flow testing, but bad things will happen. So do your scenario planning and think of
possible bad or worse outcomes than the ideal outcome. Another idea is a 10-10-10 principle. If you make a decision, most of the time, all of us, you, me, but also product people, product developers, we tend to think, okay, what will this do for me in the next, well, 10 seconds is usually a bit, but in the 10 minutes. So what's the real short term benefit of doing this or that?
Which is fine and sometimes very beneficial if you're about to cross a road while the lights actually red, I hope you take the 10 seconds to decide it would be better for me if I don't cross now. So the 10 seconds or 10 minutes frame is fine. But then also consider in your decision making the next 10 months. So what happens if I don't cross or do cross in the next 10 months? And then, and that's the real perspective for stoicism, what happens
in 10 years. So try in every decision you make, and maybe not necessarily whether you put jam or peanut butter on your sandwich in the morning, maybe that's a bit too much, but even that, but for every decision you make, take some time to reflect on the short frame, 10 minutes, 10 months and 10 years. And that's something we can do in any development, any testing and any product management setting you have. So that's a strategy that comes from this,
be prepared for what might happen. It's very interesting because when I look back at the last 20 years of agile development, we want to get rid of all this long perspective thinking. Now, we don't do any MS project planning with walls of two years and three years and so, and try only look at the iteration now. Now is our sprint, the review meeting is on Thursday,
so we have to do and don't look what is the next one. So we focused so mainly on this one part, on the short term that we don't think about what could be in 10 months or 10 years. The 10-10-10 rule is, I actually read about this rule or idea in the book by Annie Duke. thinking in bets and how to design. She used to be a professional poker player in the United States.
She wrote a book about, well actually how product, well she didn't write the book about product management, but the idea is far more things are actually bets, not certainties. And she mentions this 10-10-10 principle as well as a strategy to keep the short-term things near, which you do have to do. I mean, let's not pretend that it's suddenly a good idea to go back into the wonderful mindset and only make long-term plans and not see what's right in front of you.
That would also not be a stoic thing, since you need to live now. You need to make decisions on where you are now. But the 10-10-10 also helps to bring the further perspective closer and at least considering your decision making. Imagine with the peanut butter on your sandwich. And there could be consideration saying, well, you know, I like my peanut butter on my sandwich this morning, but it might also make me fatter than I actually want to be because there's a lot of fat in peanut butter.
So maybe if I consider, well, you know, it won't make a difference for tomorrow. But if I consider the longer term and maybe for my heart health, 10 years, maybe not so good. Maybe I take something else on my sandwich, which then leaves me with the question, what then you should put on your sandwich. But that's not what we're talking about now. Yeah, that's so true. Do you have another principle to transform into our business daily life? Yes, I have a last one to share. Well, actually two.
Oh, great. No, because I mentioned it with three lessons. As I said yesterday in my talk, I can go on for hours about this. So we could do a day long podcast. Oh, your poor listeners. But I do have a third, well, let's say lesson or a principle you could adapt, adapt or adopt. And that is, well, review or preview. The Stoics are famous for their focus on reflection. We know a lot about Stoic philosophy by this Marcus Aurelius who daily or almost daily wrote his meditations.
This is actually his journal. It's his diary. And he even wrote in it while he was campaigning in Germania, in Germany, and back in his days. And he wrote his reflections on, well, what happened, on his philosophy, on his principles, but also on how he wanted to conduct himself. And I'd like to think he did this daily. maybe he didn't, but he did this regularly. So he reflected upon his deeds.
And that is a principle I'd really like to recommend to all of us for your personal life, but also for your business life, sort of business journaling, and in particular on your decision making. So keep a log, a decision log of how you make decisions, not necessarily how does your decisions turn out. That's another thing Annie Duke warns us for. She says we tend to value
decisions by the quality of the outcome. So imagine today you decide to quit your job because you have this dream of wanting to earn more and you want to go and live in a fancy-pansy house with a big garden and a swimming pool. So you decide to quit your job and join a fancy-pansy startup. And what we tend to do when I ask you, is that a good decision?
Well, of course, if you're anything into product development and product management, you say, well, I need more information on just on this information. I can't decide anything, whether it's good or bad. And then if I tell you, well, then in the next year, it turns out that the startup becomes very successful and becomes a scale up and it's being sold for a lot of money to a big company and you get a million euros for your share in it.
And so you can actually buy that house with the garden and the swimming pool. And what you tend to do is say, oh, you see, it was a good decision. But then what could also happen is this startup doesn't become a scale up. It will go very badly. It will go bankrupt within the year. become very unhappy because you were made to work really hard and it didn't result in anything and so within a year your home bankrupt and morally bankrupt and burned out probably.
So if I tell you this outcome you probably say oh that's a bad decision you see, you shouldn't have done that. But in fact that's the outcome that's well perceived as positive or negative. It's nothing to do with decision quality itself. So that's what Annie Duke calls resulting. We tend to judge decisions by the outcome, not by the actual quality of the decision making. Now, coming back to the journaling, what helps if you keep a decision
log or a journal of how you make decisions? Try and gather some data if you can, but also realize you can never know everything that there is to know. So make small while we do this in Agile. Do small experiments and try to make the decision smaller like we do in a proper refinement. We make items smaller so we can sort of, well, get a better grip on them. Try and make your decision smaller. Realize you can't know everything and look at that.
Write down what you do to make them smaller, what you can do to make smaller bets. How and when you take decisions. We all know that if you're very hungry after a long day of work and you go to the supermarket, you probably will end up buying. I can see yourself. Stop it. Yeah. We all do. I mean, there's nothing weird about doing that. So if you want to make important decisions, also write down what are good circumstances for you to make better decisions, not in a hurry, not under time pressure.
However, there will always be decisions you need to make under time pressure and sometimes you will end up having to go to the supermarket after this long day of work, which is okay because if you train yourself with this journaling and this logging on what you actually need and how you can make better decisions, at some point this training will kick in. And this preparation will kick in at the moment you're in the supermarket after a long day of work.
Somewhere in the back of your mind, there will be something like, I know that if I do this now, it feels good for the next 10 minutes, but probably not in the long run. So log, journal. Two thoughts about that. you said the experiments and we often do the experiment stuff in HL, but I often think we are looking at too much at the outcome here, as you said. And what's for me now an inspiration to look on this on this decision making to the to the experiment and to lock that.
And I think that's for everybody very important, because we have today so many opportunities and we could decide between all things. So decision making is such a good value for us to make good decisions and to focus on that more because we can do everything today with our stuff and our life and so on. Well, and then I also guess there's another, well, it's the stoic value of temperance. We briefly touched upon that. Temperance is about holding yourself back.
I think we all have this image of a stoic being a really restrained person, someone without emotions. That's, by the way, actually not what stoicism is about. It's very much that people do have emotions. You just try to not react on them, because what you control is your own emotions. and how you reflect on them. So you're trying to change your perspective. But temperance is about holding yourself back.
So not responding to your first emotion, not responding to to what you think you might need right now. Coming back to the example of the supermarket. I, as a woman, would, of course, always think, oh, I need chocolate now. But the value of temperance then and added with the 10, 10, 10 often makes me decide not to buy the chocolate. And I think that also goes for the decision-making when it comes to experiments. We can do a lot. And well, as I say, I'm a product owner in infrastructure.
We tend to be wanting to do all kinds of fancy, fancy experiments, because we can. And then I try to apply the value of temperance and say, well, do we really need to? Do we really have to do this? And do we really have to do this now? Of course, this is nothing new here. I mean, any good product owner would always say no, unless they'd have to. But I tend to make the joke to my teams that I'm a lazy product owner. So I'd rather not do, well, something unless it's really necessary.
But that's the temperance value of, indeed, we can do any experiment, but let's not. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's a great thought. I think we can try to reduce all the decisions and look what is really necessary for us in this moment. Also to be, as I said, present at 100% and then decide what to do. Thank you very much for this inspirational podcast show interview today. For me, it's a pleasure to think and to talk about.
this stuff and to bring it into business. It's so important. So I liked that you did the talk and now here the show for us. Thank you very much and enjoy the rest OOP. Yeah, well, thanks very much, Richie. Thanks for having me. Your poor listeners, thanks for bearing with me and listening to all this stoic mumbling. I have a last goodbye remark, because that was the fourth lesson, which was actually not one of the three, but it was a bonus.
Yeah, no worries. And that is, that's one I'd like to share as a goodbye gift. And that's the turn inward. And it ties with what you just mentioned. There are so many things we could do. And maybe sometimes we shouldn't. Maybe we should take a step back, be a bit more tempered. So turn inward. It would be meditation or something else. I mean, meditations is also the book by Marcus Aurelius.
But he also says, we are in society, we're part of it, we're not secluded, but sometimes we do need to take a step back, turn inward and trust our own moral compass. So that's the last thing I'd like to leave you with. Thank you. Great, great work. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.