Gradatim Ultra
The Motto
This is my personal motto. It was crafted from my bad Latin with the help of an LLM. It roughly translates to: “Step by step, beyond”.
Why I Needed One
I never really thought about mottos until, a few years ago, I kind of hit rock bottom. I had phases where my mind started racing into hypotheticals, chaining them one after the other without letting me breathe.
One trick that helped was concentrating on the second hand of my watch. It somehow calmed me. But that was a way to stop my mind once it went into overdrive — I still needed something to prevent it from going there in the first place. After some research and consultation, it seemed having either a physical or mental anchor to return to could help.
What Didn’t Work
So I set out to search for mottos. Unfortunately most of them were not really appealing to me. I looked mainly at some well-known ones:
- Go fast and break things
- Honestly, this is kind of contrary to my values. I understand where it comes from, but I think the precautionary principle should always apply. As engineers, that is how we should work.
- Gradatim Ferociter
- This one is a lot better, it tells you how to move, but I find it lacks an objective.
- Plus Ultra
- This one is the exact opposite of Gradatim Ferociter. It tells you where to go, but not how.
Why This One
That is how I came to Gradatim Ultra. I just combined the method and the objective. I also think it has a nice recursive quality: ultra means beyond. The thing is, beyond is always further. Once you reach it, the definition of beyond shifts. In that way, I think the Spanish motto of Plus Ultra was kind of redundant on its own…
How It Applies
When I’m working on something, gradatim means understanding the problem before touching the code or design. In a way it mimics the famous: Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. By going step by step one actually moves faster beyond.
Ultra is the result: something that works reliably and doesn’t just randomly stop. Or, when it does, you do have an idea of why at least.
So, each time I can, I repeat it to myself: Gradatim Ultra
How It Prevents Runaways
Whenever mind runaway condition presents, having said to myself Gradatim Ultra multiple times during the day, prevents the mind from running. It goes only one step at the time. And it knows it won’t miss anything because even though I go Gradatim, the objective stays the same: Ultra.
At the end, it is not the current velocity that counts, but the position reached when integrating over time. Making sure the velocity vector stays consistent is often more important than its norm.