My greatest strength is empathy. It has been the desire to understand and be understood that's been ever present in my life, and is the reason I am able to adapt to differing situations. Strengths are often double-sided swords, and have a shadow aspects that form our greatest weaknesses. Too much empathy, on one hand has also made me a little cautious around certain personality types. It also makes me a little more prone to observartion than action, which depending on the situation can be both a strength or weakness.
When I have a clearly defined task, I work best alone away from distractions. I don't mind working around people, but it does require a little extra concentration. If the task involves a group, I do my best work if we are all similarly excited on the outcome of our project, can communicate our vision, and can depend on one another to do our job well. In general, I prefer loose guidelines to a rigid structure to accomplish a task; a clear idea with undefined processes.
I can be a bit of an emotional sponge. My biggest improvement lies in creating boundaries between my own emotions and those of others, so that someone else's worries don't worry me. It would allow me to be more effective help. Additionally, I could be less self-critical and have more confidence in my abilities. I could also improve in communicating my own emotions, and maintaining tact during difficult situations.
I could be an effective leader, if I am able to gain the tact to confront difficult emotions without soaking them in. I believe I can help inspire honesty, accountability, and passion; first, I must be willing to get out of my shell, risk exposure and possible failure. As it is now, I am comfortable in a supporting role where I take care of the smaller details around a project.
When you know what you bring to the table, it's easier to gain a seat at said table. Knowing your strengths brings awareness to your daily processes and how you confront the challenges that face you. It also allows you to know your weaknesses, and how you can use that strength to improve on them. Working preferences allow you to consciously and actively modify your environment to set yourself up for success.
===============================================
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?
I try to spread out the workload over time, and have started to focus on one concept/exercise at a time. For the capstone project, this has been my workflow: Read the questions from the day file, then skim-read the relevant chapter. Take a break. Read the questions once more, and go back and dive deeper into the reading to synthesize my answers. I believe this has helped, because it makes the content more digestable. I can still improve in my organization skills, or rather managing the workspace that is my laptop screen. On days when I worked on both the Capstone and Mod 0 homework, I found myself getting lost in between tabs, windows, and different apps. Even though it allowed for cross-pollination of different subjects, it also got out of hand and began costing me time.
I agree with Coate when he argues everyone should give themselves the opportunity to learn something difficult every ten years or so. Without much thought, I'm on track to do so every five years or so; first with the german language, then with climbing, and now coding. Sierra's keynote has shed light on the methods involved. I can see how the most effective learning I have done has come from breaking down information into a similar process. I'm excited to more conciously implement it through my time at Turing.
What role does your emotional state of mind play in your learning? How do your successes and failures at learning affect your emotional state?
I will admit my emotions can de the driver sometimes. I find that a sour mood can deter me from being able to focus on a task at hand; on the other hand, when I am excited about a subject I soak up information and are eager to absorb more. I can let failures at learning get me down, and quickly get over-analytical about them, but it's all in the spirit of getting it right the next time. It has taken some maturity to understand that failures are part of the learning process and allow myself to make mistakes. I am excited at successes, but have a tendency to forget about/downplay them.
I think learning comes naturally to me, but I also acknowledge that this is a big lifestyle change for me. I know I will have to adapt to being full on, all the time rather than operate at the leisurely pace I have been these last few years. This means establishing a clear, weekly routine to optimize my time to learn, care for basic needs, and recuperate (ie. leisure activities). I'm not really sure how best to prepare my brain to soak up all that information, but I am excited to do so. On the other hand, I have been working on automizing/settling down on a weekly menu so less time is spent on deciding what to eat and more is spent on actually preparing food for the week ahead. I think this is huge, because food is not just a basic physical need, but also provides an emotional anchor for me. Two birds with one stone.