At some point in your life, you must have been tempted to skip steps i.e alter the sequential flow in the process of achieving some things or getting things done. From learning to do things you feel find too difficult, to encountering some challenges you met with, to building that dream project of yours, and so on. They all require series of steps to follow to achieve your goal. There is a quote, which author I do not know, but its moral keeps ringing bells in my heart "gra gra gra" while writing this article. It goes thus:
You can't produce a baby in one month, by getting nine ladies pregnant. -- Unknown Author
The statement is very true and it signifies the importance of following a well-defined process. While the world may appreciate and reward those who break rules. Even they too followed some steps which the media cannot seize to be economical with its declaration. News of dropouts building Fortune 500 is very common on the internet as if they do not follow any plan. While the subject may sound cliche to some, but it very true. Though pieces of advice are mostly opinionated, you take this post as a testament to my understanding of the world we all live in and the art of getting things done the way we want to. With all said, I think the purpose of the post has been made clear.
When we don't have a process we follow
There are lots of events in which we might have unconsciously skip steps. I could remember getting started with programming. Of course, I was excited to finally understood what some web portals I've visited in the past were made of. I had resumed as a freshman at a Nigerian specialized tertiary institution to study Computer Science. "I'm supposed to be a hands-on Computer scientist", I told myself. I was not very lucky to have known much about computers before my admission. The little I knew about the computer was what my elder brother told me about it. He would tell me about some of his colleagues in school doing great things with computers.
I was about to get into my second year, I stumbled upon a pdf doc on HTML, using the Text Editor that came with my low-versioned Android phone then. I save the code in the book with a .html extension, "Gboa!!". It worked, I saw a web form with an orange background. That was the journey. While the beginning might have seemed exciting, had I followed a well-defined process, I would have had impressive progress. Guess what? The reverse was the case. I would just take some random learning material I could find through google. While I thought I was doing fine by building some stuff, following some examples in the learning resources I use: Video or Text. My Hard Drive would have been very tired because I had lots of learning resources I would never open throughout a semester. I literarily got it right when I saw people who started after me, doing great stuff. There I was jumping from one language to another. Though I still acknowledge that experience as a perspective shaper. Because It made the best of me.
In a nutshell, not having a process to follow, can alter our flow of learning, and leave us confused, which may give room for Imposter Syndrome. Especially when we do not acknowledge our mistakes.
How to have a process
I will be taking you through how you can be intentional about having a process in your learning to becoming better at your chosen field. Without further delay, let's get in right there by immersing ourselves deeply in the steps that make up a process you can follow.
- Define your purpose:
As they say, purpose creates true happiness, it gives us the feeling of doing something bigger than ourselves. In anything we do, having a feeling that thing has a connection to our goal will give us the reason to keep tied to that thing and persevere in challenging times. It could be securing a job, solving a problem with our technical skills, giving back to society, and so on. Purpose gives us a view of the big picture of something. Purpose gives answers to your "why" questions. Why should I take up this project? Why should I work with that company? and other kinds of questions demanding urgent answers at every point in our lives.
- Have a plan and stick to it
After understanding your purpose of embarking on something, you must create a plan for yourself and stick to it. I feel it should not be created for you by someone else. Since you understand how you do things better. Consider using tools you find very comfortable for you. In my case, I just draft them in my Simple note. A plan ought to be a blueprint of how we intend to achieve something. just like building a house, having a plan will make it easier for the builder to know what to do. Some of the benefits of having a plan are:
- It helps you to identify your most important priorities.
- It will allow you to maintain a balance.
- It will help you to envision a better future.
- It will equip you to accomplish what matters most.
-Make a research on people who have achieved what you intend to achieve
This has helped me a lot in identifying and understanding what the things that need to be done are. It gives me an overview of the steps they have taken to achieve what they intend to achieve. For instance: If I wanted to become a DevOps Engineer, going to LinkedIn will serve me well in identifying the right course to take, the people they follow, they follow professionally, their work experience. And I would also find out if they have a blog. Also, I try and look through my network to see if I could find someone who works in that role, or they have they friend they can refer me to. It is hard to read up everything without consulting others.
- Gather the right resources
Some of the learning problems we face mostly emanate from our lack of having adequate resources to use. I think I have made this sort of mistake more than anybody in a room. Starting, I do jump from one resource to another, which left me confused for times. Sticky to not more than two resources at a time. From my experience, I feel that is the best way to go. And how can I get the best resources to learn that thing? What has worked for me is to google courses or books on a particular subject. Say courses on Nodejs. I would go through the review of courses on Pluralsight, Coursera, Udemy, and so on. And for books, I would go to Amazon and Goodreads to read people's review on that book. I could also contact people who know that thing for an answer.
- Have a mentor
I have seen a post in which the author expresses his issues with having a mentor. I feel that is only his opinion and I respect that. Mentorship is the kind of guidance you receive from someone more successful in an area you are looking forward to exploring or have little experience in. For everything, I intend to understand, for instance how a full-time remote job works.
Disclaimer You may decide to follow your instinct instead of following your mentor's advice.
-Break your plan into actionable tasks
When I was starting as a developer, I easily get overwhelmed in executing my plans. Say I want to build a registration system, I would start up without considering breaking them out into actionable tasks. Little did I know that I would later get easily bored by my to-do. Instead, break it down into UIs and Logic will be more effective. Without distilling the todo into actionable tasks, you would usually spend more than enough hours working on something you are not going to complete. Instead finding tools that would assist you in breaking down your tasks will be very helpful. In my case I use Trello to break down my tasks, and set Pomodoro to 15 to 20 mins, depending on my assumed technicality of their task.
Thanks for following through till the end. By now, you would have understood how to put a process in place to achieve your goals. All gifs used in this post can be found on giphy. Good Luck.