My greatest strength is my ability to work with others. Aside from being well-correlated in the Pairin results I received, I always do my best in a team situation. I have a high patience with other people and like to help in any way I can, leading them to answers without necessarily giving them directly. I'm also not afraid to ask for help, knowing that others may have more knowledge or experience of a certain topic. While this doesn't mean I am unwilling, unable, or even bad at working alone, it does mean I do my best work alongside others.
I work best in a calmer, more focused environment with a team. It allows me to ditch the distractions I lean to and instead to tune in on the work. I rarely listen to music, opting more often for an approach without noise so I can think; I also tend to get immersed in music, shifting my focus. The team aspect is my strength, as I mentioned earlier.
My greatest area of improvement would probably be decisiveness without impulsiveness. I tend to either overthink a problem or skip the thinking altogether to rush out a solution. Both methods offer mixed but surprisingly similar results in which the time to act had passed or I made an assumption I shouldn't have. I also tend to get frustrated with myself easily for forgetting something or missing a detail.
I hope to maximize my strengths by communicating with other people. In a team, I strive to make sure every idea is heard before we decide. I'll listen and collaborate, watching how other people's thinking processes work and looking for different ways of solving a problem, then sharing my thoughts on how and who I think would best solve it. Sometimes a different perspective is all that's necessary to fix the issue.
Knowing who you are and what you excel at is beneficial to any career. That said, it's all the more important as a software developer. Developers often work on very large projects, and knowing where you'll fit in best will often save time and headaches later on. Without the right working preferences, most people get extremely stressed, and their work quality will reflect it. And while it is occasionally beneficial to work outside your comfort zone, doing so for extended periods of time tends to wear even the most stalwart down.
What efforts do you make to manage your learning process? Are these efforts successful? What challenges have inhibited your ability to manage your learning process effectively?
Often when I want or need to learn a skill, I dive in and try to work my way through the process. Sometimes I'm successful, but it usually turns out I learn the how without learning the why. It also drains me quickly; I tend to lose focus a lot more quickly sifting through a lot of material I don't understand yet. My learning process honestly holds me back, and it might be time for a shift in paradigm.
It's very obvious listening to Sierra's video that my current process takes a lot of my cognitive resources, and anything I practice without an intent to improve will hold me back from getting better. Changing my learning process might make me better in the long run. Coates's article is also important, as often learning is a struggle. Knowing how to hold on to your high points helps make those low points more bearable. Setting goals helps in that circumstance, reminding me of what I have accomplished.
What role does your emotional state of mind play in your learning? How do your successes and failures at learning affect your emotional state?
Emotional state of mind is pretty huge in learning. It's hard to focus on learning something new when you're feeling hopeless or stuck. It takes from your cognitive resources, making you more frustrated and more likely to make mistakes. When you're feeling better, though, learning becomes easier; being able to apply what you've already learned makes learning something new feel more rewarding in the process. At Turing, success makes me feel confident in my ability to learn and apply new things. I don't really see failure as the opposite of success in most cases; I learn a lot more about how a program's syntax works when I work through the errors it gives me. At the same time, failure does tend to be more taxing on my motivation.
I will embrace the statement that every failure is just an opportunity to learn. I don't expect to succeed at most concepts on my first, or even fifth, try. But after learning and moving past my failed attempts, I'll keep pushing to succeed. I'll also work on learning concepts in smaller chunks so as not to overload myself. By doing so, I can keep my focus on the project at hand instead of everything I still need to learn.