Postcards From My Life

Dear Reader,

At what point are we “Professionals” at what we do? In “Outliers“, Malcolm Gladwell says we have to put in 10,000 hours to master a skill, but does mastery of  skill make us a professional?

Albert Einstein tells us “If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t understand it yourself.” Does being able to explain what we do to a child make us a professional?

I believe that we are professionals at a given skill when we can – and are willing to – use it to help others.

Professional does not indicate skill level or competency, it indicates a willingness to use a skill to the benefit other ones self, others, and society in general.

A carpenter who spends their spare time building houses for low-income families, is a Professional, regardless of their skill level.

A developer who spends some of their free time creating and managing an open source project is  professional programmer.

Don’t just take the time to master a skill, invest the time to be a professional.

Until next time,
I <3 |<

Dear Reader,

I had a student recently getting her open water certification who had never put on a pair of fins before.

She struggled with skills as we practiced them. No matter what, she was just not getting it.

At one point, as we were in the deep end of the pool, she had a panic attack. Luckily, we were all on the surface.

As I corralled the other students and kept them busy practicing their skills, the instructor worked with her. He had her lie on her back and float. He kept telling her very calmly, just take a deep breath.

It worked. It took about 10 minutes to calm down. This was a turning point for her for the day.

Not only did she complete all the skills after that properly, she did so while remaining neutrally buoyant and off the bottom of the pool. Performing the skills is one thing, doing it while being able to hover 3 to 5 feet off the bottom is an order of magnitude harder for new divers.

She was able to do all of this because she paused, cleared her mind, and took a deep breath or two.

Until next time,

I <3 |<
=C=

Dear Reader,

I spent time this week reading the employee handbook for the company I for whom I work. At this company, the handbook starts with a statement of the eight company core values, and an explanation of each. These core values are so important to the culture of the company that they are recorded in the one document that every employee must read and agree to before beginning work.

I’ve worked at companies who have had core values before.

One company’s core value was “Over promise and over deliver”. This is great for sales people, but when developers take it to heart it resulted in 80-100 hour work weeks because someone else over promised and they had to over deliver.

Another company wrote the core values in chalk in the break room. It struck more than one employee that the core values were expressed in an erasable medium.

All of this has forced me to reflect on my own personal core values.

My reflection is a work in progress.

It is important to me though that I know my core values, and that – more importantly – I live my core values. (something I’ve not always done)

Until next time,
I <3 |<
=C=

Dear Reader,

I am a self-taught programmer.

This does not mean I conceived of all the knowledge I have in a vacuume. It does mean that I did not have a formal guide on my journey. I had to figure out what was important and what was not. Whether you are self-taught or formally educated, you are still learning what others before you have learned and shared.

As I learn new things, build on my experience, experiment, and come up with new ideas, it is important that I not forget that I am where I am because of those that have come before me. They shared what they learned so that I could learn it too.

It is up to me to carry on that tradition and share. I must share what I know with the current generation and the next, so that they can learn, be inspired, experiment, discover, and then share.

If we all stand on the shoulders of giants, eventually it is our turn to be the giant.

Until next time,
I <3 |<
=C=

Dear Reader,

If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.

— Maya Angelou

Some days it is hard to be happy. You wakeup knowing that you’ve got to slog through a swamp before the day is done and you just start pre-dreading.

Take 5-minutes, close your eyes, and go to your happy place. I go diving with the lovely and talented Kathy, but you go where ever you are the happiest. Stay there for five whole minutes. It may take some practice to let your mind wander like this, you may have to work up to five minutes. Still, make the effort.

Invest this 5 minutes every morning, and you will find that your attitude changes.

No, this little life hack won’t solve any of your problems. Changing your attitude however, will change how you see those problems, and that’s the first step to solving them.

Until next time,
I <3 |<
=C=