I love Ikea.
Not its furniture, nor that moment when you're at someone else's house and think "ah, I have that piece, and that one, and that one...", nor the endless aisles, nor the act of lifting a heavy box onto your cart, nor the drive out to the suburbs...
So, I mean, I don't like almost anything about Ikea.
I just love their business concept.
It has two perspectives: the objective perspective and the subjective perspective.
The objective perspective is what makes it feasible for you to furnish a home at a low cost.
Your new house fits into the trunk of your car thanks to its flat-pack format.
And then you assemble it with an Allen wrench.
Awesome.
But that's not enough.
The objective, the rational, is never sufficient.
Because you're not rational (neither is your brother-in-law, your neighbor, me, or anyone else).
You're emotional.
The fact that it's feasible to assemble your own furniture without hiring a decorator or a truck is not important unless there's an emotional aspect to it.
And that's where the Ikea effect comes in.
What Ikea truly gives you is the chance to build your own home.
Sure, the furniture might be of poor quality, and all your friends may have the same pieces. But you assembled them yourself.
Everything you do seems cooler, tastes better.
That's why, due to what we call the Ikea effect, when you need to convince someone of something, the approach is not to provide the objective arguments as to why your idea is good: the cool approach is to make the other person believe that the idea is their own.
You value what comes from within you more.
The Ikea effect in programming is a constant. For two reasons:
You enjoy what you do more because you've worked on it yourself. The only way to truly learn it is to put in the work. And that effort will motivate you to continue studying. Precisely because it's you who is creating.
And when you learn the right tools, you're able to build complex software structures you never thought you could build. Without being a computer scientist, an engineer, a graphic designer, a front-end developer, a full-stack developer, or knowing a whole bunch of terms you don't even understand.
Only by being you can you achieve what was never within your reach before.
You just need a guide, someone to provide you with the ingredients so you can mix them yourself. And you'll like the result.
I organize training with the Ikea effect. For more details, email me at hola@leonardohansa.com
P.S. When you write to me, I'll reply with questions. Once I have the answers to those questions, I'll let you know in what format and at what price I can work with you. And with that, we start working.