- My greatest strength is my ability to teach myself. In my previous career as a professional brewer, I was completely self-taught. Through serious motivation, persistence, trial-and-error, lots of hard work (hours upon hours spent behind a boiling pot), and a pile of books + a googolplex of Google searches, I had finally acquired enough knowledge to brew professionally. This knowledge continued to grow and develop into new techniques, better and more efficient processes, and more consistent finished products, throughout my entire brewing career. The one place that I realized I cannot succeed is in a place where I feel stagnant, and like I am no longer learning.
- I work best when there is much exploration to be done. I work best when there are clear objectives and goals, paired with a little infrastructure. I work best when I am motivated to find answers for myself. I work best in the later hours of the day (I'm not sure why this is, but it seems like the time that my 'creative juices' are less viscous. I work best under a little pressure and with fear of failing.
- My greatest area of improvement is in the areas of time management and procrastination. I once waited until the night before my final critique in my Drawing II class in college, to complete a 100 drawing sketch book that I hadn't started. This was a huge mistake, because no matter the circumstance, one cannot complete a body of work in a single night that was supposed to be completed throughout a semester.
- In the area of time management / with time being a limited resource and Turing requiring a hefty time commitment, I will be: drawing out calendars, making check lists, using reminders on my phone, creating sticky notes, and utilizing a timer. So that I can closely manage the limited time that I will have.
- I hope to continue to hone my ability to teach myself new and different things, especially as they pertain to development. I have been so motivated in my life to teach myself how to do so many different things, from brewing to home repairs to truck maintenance to harvesting my own food. I hope to transfer and maximize that motivation in the field of software. I also hope to motivate myself in learning within a digital landscape, because up until recently my entire self-teaching has been in an analog activities environment.
- "Play to your own strengths" means exactly what the statement is implying. If you are able to identify your strengths, and the ways in which you work best, you can subsequently set yourself up for success. If one is unaware of how they learn or work best, it seems difficult if not impossible to be set up to succeed in any environment. Knowing my strengths working preferences and knowledge acquisition method, I will be pointing in the right direction on the multifaceted path of software development.
- 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?
- How do Sierra's and Coate's material relate to your current process for learning?
- What role does your emotional state of mind play in your learning? How do your successes and failures at learning affect your emotional state?
- How will you prepare yourself to be at your best with your learning process while at Turing?
I undoubtedly take Sierra's approach when learning new material… If I stand back and take a very macro look at the subject of what I am learning and try to wrap my head around knowing each and every working component of a thing, in order to learn and understand the thing itself, I get instantly plagued with self-doubt, and scared that I will never understand how to do it. BUT, if I take a step back, and begin to break things down into digestible components, that will eventually form themselves into the totality of the thing that I am trying to learn, things become a lot more clear and simple, and easier to learn. Doing things this way has been rather successful for me. Instead of thinking that I am not capable of learning such a daunting topic.
In Sierra'a approach she is referencing 3 Boxes A,B and C. Where box A represents things that I have to do but can't, box B that represents things that I can do, but that require effort (cognitive resource) and box C, which represents all the things that I have mastered and can do on auto-pilot. She does further into explaining how things need to move from place to place in order to be successful at something. I continuously find myself (regardless of what I am doing: reloading, fly fishing, hunting, brewing) taking items from my "C" pile and moving them back to "B" where I can continue to modify my approach, process, and efficiency. This refining only help to make my learned skills better and that much more effective when I move them back to the "C" expert / mastered box. This as Sierra explains is the mark of a successful person. And I do feel successful at those things that I have taken the time to refine and relearn in a better way.
Challenges that inhibit my ability to lear are feeling like I 'suck' at something. As Coates explains, it is good for every human to get involved in learning something new every 10 years, that they suck at. It was exactly 10+ years ago in 2009 that I began teaching myself how to brew, and let me tell you; When I first started brewing, I SUCKED at it. But persistence, perseverance and dedication (also there is no substitute for time spent engaging with something) were the key to eventually several years later becoming great at brewing. It is very difficult for me to motivate myself to learn at first though, when I feel like I am truly bad at something. This is a feeling that I am not all too familiar with, but one that I loathe.
My emotional state during the learning process is directly tied to my success and failures. Failures make me feel incapable (which as an overarching theme in my life, I am a very capable person at most everything that I try). Failure makes me feel like SHIT. But in Coate’s words you have to embrace the suck as part of the process. "The struggle is the norm – lows are the norm, so savor the feeling high."
This is the mindset that I need embrace while at Turing, and likely after I finish. I need to embrace the SUCK, and find a way to be bad at something until that moment comes that I am no longer bad at something, but I have become an expert through exposure, repetition and practice.