I'm here to finally commit to the concept of Learning In Public.
I remember first coming across this article when it published in 2018, and how much mind-blowing sense it made as I read through it. As an internet native growing up on prime-time Web 2.0 (if you were there, you'd know I'm talking about the glory days of Xanga, MySpace, message boards) – shouting into the void in the form of a blog post has been my way of leaving a digital footprint.
Having worked in the IT side of tech for 5 years, the most valuable takeaway I'm finally beginning to understand is to embrace being a life-long learner. There is power in leaning into the opportunity to improve even by 1%. Although humility is the endurance to run the marathon, what I'm looking to improve upon is a crucial part of the formula: action. There is a lot that can be extracted about our character through our actions, and it's in the small, almost sub-conscious actions (or in-actions) that can either help or harm us in achieving our goals.
“Success is the product of daily habits—not once-in-a-lifetime transformations.”
As a person who has shamelessly been a self-help psychology book type of reader, you would think setting goals and achieving them for myself is not that difficult of a task. Seeking out a new skill, learning how to learn, and just about anything that touches the psychology of discipline and forming habits is material I soak up like a sponge.
Yet here I am, still feeling stuck – only half committed to a goal I said I wanted for myself years ago. I have a confession to make: I've been stuck as this "aspiring, self-taught developer" for far longer than I wanted it to be.
Hindsight is always 20/20, and in reflecting on what I've done (my actions) versus what I've wanted to achieve (complicit humility), I wasn't happy with the output. I'm realizing that I found comfort in being committed to being a life-long learner, not realizing I wasn't actually making any forward progress – what was I actually really learning? More importantly, how did I know I was really learning to the capacity where it could help me achieve my goals, which is to professionally become a Software Engineer? Desire for a dream will only achieve so much – I also realized that I had no system in place to measure and actually gauge my progress to become a Software Engineer. Despite having habit trackers for other everyday personal goals (there's just something so satisfying about a good streak build up) in my life, why haven't I been able to apply the same tracking method to coding?
I couldn't feel confident about writing this first blog post without having a descriptive stamp in time to honor this moment. Although this feels like a bumpy ride of words trying really hard to deliver a parable in the underlying story of it all, I'm here to challenge myself to practice the profound advice I've gathered through out the years, and just write for myself – more specifically, my future self. We're still here, occupying some corner of the internet.