What is your greatest strength and how do you know?
Having worked in leadership positions, my responsibilities often include coaching and mentoring others on their personal and professional development. Because of that, I am familiar with a variety of the personal assessments tools that are out there. According to Pairin, my greatest strength is my Entrepreneurial Insight. According to Clifton's Strength Finders, my strengths are Futuristic, Command, Individualization, Analytical, and Developer. According to the Myers Briggs assessment, my preferences lie in the ENTP personality and the list goes on. There’s a lot of insight you can gather from these kinds of assessments, but in my experience there is nothing better than simply reflecting on your personal experiences and writing a personal action plan to learn from them.
That being said, I believe my greatest strength is being able to look at a problem or solution through many different perspectives and imagining how it would play out in all of those scenarios. Perhaps a better way to phrase this is that I have strong innovative sense. I typically don’t settle for standard results and I really enjoy digging into problems. I know this because of my experience as professional to date, whether it be a technical, personal or creative problem. If I am feeling confident and competent, I can usually bring solutions to the table that are not only different, but more efficient. A better way of doing things.
Personally, I find it extremely motivating when I get to assume this role. When I am working in this capacity, I typically produce my best work. My worst nightmare is doing something just because that’s the way we’ve always done it. There’s certainly a time and place for that, especially when learning, but I believe there’s always room for improvement if the conditions are right.
How do you work best?
As I mentioned above, I typically work best when I really get to dig and focus on one large problem at a time. Especially when I believe it can have a largely beneficial impact. I also find that I work best when using a troubleshooting or scientific protocol. I favor that sort of organiztion or deduction in problem solving.
From an environmental standpoint, I work best when free of social distractions. For example, I used to show up early or stay late in the office because when no one was there. I believe this is mainly due to that fact that I am very social and services oriented person. I find it difficult to simply ignore others. For example, I do not work well positioned around reception areas or entrances as I will feel obliged to greet. I tend to make eye contact and engaged others very easily. Also, working in pods (one giant table with multiple workstations and not much personal space) is difficult for me. In meetings, this becomes a strength because I can usually get a very good feel for the room, keep people engaged and present/facilitate without issue.
What is your greatest area of improvement?
I would say that my greatest area of improvement lies in activation and follow-through. My mind runs a mile-a-minute and it’s very easy for me to come up with new ideas or strategies constantly while working. Even when I am not looking for them. So much so, that it can distract me from the work I am currently doing, overwhelm me with possibilities and delay completion. This especially becomes a problem when I am working on many different projects at once. I’ve been working on putting these ideas in a “parking lot” and coming back to them later, so I can finish the task at hand.
Another strategy I have been using is limiting my brainstorming through timed methods. It becomes difficult though, because I find that when I start working through a problem, the initial brainstorm is no longer relevant and I want to abandon and explore these new directions, which is the process that often lead to better solutions (as mentioned in the above). Discerning when is a good and bad time to research a new direction is my biggest challenge. In other words, finding a way to control and turn this ability off, especially when time management becomes prudent.
How do you hope to maximize your strengths for your new career in software development?
I hope to maximize my entrepreneurial, futuristic, developer, individualization and analytical strengths to build some really amazing apps or products. Preferably ones that affect and enrich people’s lives in the tangible world. I also hope to utilize them in order to enrich the lives of my teammates, coworkers and really anyone I interact with. I believe team dyanmics are a big part of me being satisfied with my work. Whether we like it or not, spend enough time with someone and they will affect you personally. For this reason, I try to be very intentional in all my interactions. In other words, I enjoy working with humans just as much as I enjoy working with computers. I think it's just as important, if not more.
How might knowing about your strengths and working preferences benefit you as a software developer?
I believe knowing about my strengths and working preferences would benefit me a software developer because I will be more aware of how each component of my working ecosystem effects each other. I'm assuming being able to approach complex problems from many perspectives is also a huge plus in programming as it improves your chances find the best solution at the time. I also beleive if you’re having issues at work, understanding your strengths and work preferences gives you a starting point on what adjustments you may need to make to your work style. You also know where you will likely best contribute for your team or where you are more likely going to need to reach out for help, which allows you to leverage situational leadership for yourself.
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?
Efforts I make to manage my learning process including blocking out time in my calendar and using Focus booster. If I'm being honest, they have not been successful yet. It's still a learning process for me to prioritize education. It's been a long time since I’ve done it full or even part-time. I wouldn’t say I’m having to “relearn” how to learn. This is an entirely different challenge. Back in college, life was much more stress free and without the adult responsibilities and anxieties I face today. Sometimes life or other people get in the way, or perhaps its an alarm bell that goes off in my head saying "why aren't you making money right now, what are you doing? you need to survive and provide!" It can even feel selfish at times to lock myself away from my family to prioritize learning.
As for Focus booster and pomodoro technique, they haven't worked for me yet as 25 minutes into something I feel like I'm just getting into my groove and I don't want to stop and then have to restart again. I’m not giving up on either of these techniques, or learning for that matter.
How do Sierra's and Coate's material relate to your current process for learning? Sierra's keynote really hit home for me. I can absolutely relate to using my cognitive resources as if I have an unlimited supply. I certainly have been living as a humanoid. I can also relate to her concept of developing a higher form of intuition, where it is difficult to explain how you learned what you learned, even though you have excelled at it. This especially comes to mind when I think of any of the extreme sports I have taken up over the years. It's all in the muscle memory and "flow," which is hard to teach. Like most everyone, I'm assuming, I've been operating that way most of my life. I can recall freshman year of high school having my english teacher ask me in front of the class why the grammatical structure in a sentence was wrong and I responded out loud "It just is. It sounds awful." Everyone laughed, but clearly, there's a valid basis to that.
It currently relates in my process of learning because it reminds to trust in exposure, even if you're not feeling productive, your mind is observing and rewiring how it looks at this new information, therefore, putting in the time is worth it. Coate's article hit home as well. Especially when it comes to keeping up my motivation. Every now and then I have to switch tasks just to keep myself in "drive" if that makes sense. For example, tinking about and writing out these answers has been bogging me down. Going back to run technical coding exercises has lifted me back up and "bought me back in" to why writing these introspective answers out are necessary.
What role does your emotional state of mind play in your learning? How do your successes and failures at learning affect your emotional state?
My emotional state plays a huge role in my learning as it's directly linked to my focus and motivation. As mentioned above, sometimes I give myself simple repetitious exercises that have a specific, currently attainable goal. This has the affect of getting me back in rhythm and progress to more difficult work. It is absolutely worth the time. Success of course, is pleasurable and motivate me to keep going. Success buys back my confidence.
I believe in failing forward, but let’s be honest, if you're tired and too many things are failing it once you know it's time change things up. Sometimes that translates to taking a break and going outside, perhaps going for a bike ride.The key for me is to always remember that failure is in the past, you don’t need to live in it perpetually and every moment that passes you have opportunities to learn and stat anew. In other words, I try not identify with it personally.
How will you prepare yourself to be at your best with your learning process while at Turing?
Things I am currently doing or plan to do to be at my best while learning are:
- Block out my time, schedule myself. Through trial and error learn what time management system works best for me, but be accountable to it.
- Get the pomodoro technique into practice.
- Apply the "plus 10" rule. When training for ultra endurance events I learned this from a mentor. I've been trying to get used to working longer hours in preparation for Turing. Think of Turing as a very long marathon than a sprint. So in order to ramp up to the huge mental exercise that is Turing, I have been adding 10% of study time to my day every day. I should be around a 60-70 hour study week by the time I reach the start of Mod 1 on January 27th. My goal is have my personal time scheduled as well, so that I can get my work/life balance activities in as well.
- Use wunderlist to prioritize my tasks in each area of my life. "One thing at a time. Do most important thing First. Start now, delay."