Being comfortable outside your comfort zone

Recently I have written about feeling too comfortable in the place where you are right now. I also asked if it is possible that you are the one responsible for this situation.
It’s a good start when you know that you feel comfortable.
It’s better when you realize that you are the person who has control over this comfort.

What can be next?

Are you building comfortable place for you?

What about the last question from the previous article? Did you answer it?

Last time we were talking about places that are too comfortable for us. But maybe this is not a problem?
Maybe there are challenges around you? Maybe there are things that require learning? Things that take people out of their comfortable zones?
Maybe it’s not about a place, but about… you?


Maybe you are just letting those opportunities go away? Let them be taken by another person? Maybe you build this asylum around you with your own hand?


I understand that no one likes to be overwhelmed. Don’t want to do a job that should be done by someone else. Yet, if there’s no one who is responsible and the task requires someone’s attention and time, who would be willing to help? If there is no one who knows how or those who knows already have too much on their plate?

Maybe there are situations like this in your company? What are you doing then? Are you pushing them back?
Yes, it’s not your responsibility. Yes, you don’t have to do it. No one will argue with you about this.

On the other hand, you can. If you want to.


Maybe your comfort is not built on a solid ground where nothing changes?
Maybe you just don’t let in anything new?

Think about it.

If the place is too comfortable maybe there is something that you can do about it?

Too comfortable?

Piece.
Quiet.
You can calm down and do your job.

You know what has to be done.
You know how it needs to be done.

And even if there are any differences between the issues... there is no reason to panic.
You have been here so many times.
Solutions are always similar.
You know where to go for help. Whom to ask if it would be needed.

You feel comfortable. Almost relaxed.

When perfection is a goal…

Life without purpose is senseless. This is why each of us need a goal. Something that will motivate us and push us forward.
The main problem with most goals is the fact that some day you will end your journey. And then, for a moment you will feel… weird. On the one hand you will be happy, because “this is already it”, but on the other hand you’ll feel uncertain, because you will have to find another goal.
How long will it take?
What if you won’t find anything?
And that’s the beauty of mastery. That’s the beauty of trying to reach it. Why?
When perfection is your goal the endless journey is waiting for you.

Daily (after stand-up) presentations

In my team we are always trying something new, we like to experiment with new ideas, we looking for new ways of learning something which is worth to be learned.
After one of our's retrospection we decided to do a presentations, at least once a week. We had presentations before, but we wanted to start with someting that would be organized in better way, would be regular.
We knew that each of us reads a lot, tries many new things on daily basis and it would be great to spread this knowledge and share it with teammates. We created even a list with our propositions of subjects for those presentations.

That was good idea and we were so eager to do so... but...

After a few weeks it turns out that not so much presentations were done. We had ideas (many of them was already listed), we had knowledge (each of us already knew something about some of the subjects on the list), but in most times, we couldn't convert our knowledge into a few slides of presentation. It was just too... hard? I believe, not, it was just too time consuming.
Yeah, what can I say, we are lazy, we like to learn, but to teach is a different story, if you want to teach you need to be prepared, it requires additional work on something that you already know. That leads to simple conclusion - if I can spend my time to learn something new or on creating presentation about something that I already know, choice is easy and obvious for most of us.

That's why our "presentations plan" died... but not completely.
We talked about the idea almost on each retrospection and many times on daily meetings. On the other hand, we shared a links with each other, we had short conversations in pairs or in bigger groups.
When I noticed all those facts I started to merge them into an one idea - daily (after stand up) presentations.

What it's all about?
After our stand-up meetings we started to do a short (not longer than 10 minutes) presentations. It can be anything, summary of a great article, short introduction to a new idea or tool, it just must be short and interesting.
We agreed that no presentation (I mean document or something similar) is required. Just whiteboard, presenter and all interested people.

Whether it is revealing? I think, not, but I believe that organizing somehow our short and random discussions (with various number of participators) improved spreading a knowledge. Removing necessary of creating a real presentation (documents) decreased our laziness and we are more likely to doing such a presentations even once a day (or even more if it won't take more than 10).

I believe that most of us want to learn, want to develop their skills almost all the time. Why don't try to do it together? It will be more efficient and you will increase a chance to learn something that you could even didn't know it exists.

what achievement is?

Recently in company, where I work, we tryied to introduce new ways of people evaluation. I don't want to go into details, today I want to write down my thoughts on one word, which occurs on each meeting. The word is - achievement.

I noticed that we are using this word on those meetings in so many different contexts, so I proposed, that we should firstly define what achievement is, before we will go further in this discussion. Everyone agreed and each of us had to bring proposition of this definition on next meeting.

I thought about this definition, I even had my own propositions and just few hours before the meeting I sit down and asked myself - what we're trying to do? We want to define word which is already defined? We want to invent a circle once again?

It needs to be interesting

Do everything what we learn should be useful for us?
I believe so. In present days, we got no time for spend it on useless activities. But do we always know what would be useful for us? Do we know it, when we first time hear about something? All those blogs that we are reading, all those books, is there always something useful? Sometimes answer isn't so obvious, sometimes is. Sometimes even happens that we learned something, but life changes and knowledge which was never used before probably never won't be used.
But do we think that was a waste of time? I can answer only for myself, but many times, when everything changed, I didn't regretted what I've learned, even when I knew that knowledge won't be useful for me anymore.

I don't want to work alone anymore

Few months ago we decided to focus more on pair programming. We were doing it from time to time before, but after few conversations with far more experienced people, I spoke with the team and we agreed that it's worth to try doing more pair programming.

If there were so many people, who found pair programming as a one of the greatest technique they have ever experienced, it should be worth to spend some more time to improve it in our Scrum. What bad could happen either way?

After those few months, I can say that was really good idea to invest more time and improve this technique in our team. Right now almost half of our user stories are implemented in pairs and everyone loves it. Why?

become a challenge seeker

another thing to do

So, you are starting. New feature to implement, complex modification, improvements in performance, user experience in UI or something completely different.

You got everything what you need to start, you got it from customer. Is he/her difficult with cooperation? Doesn't matter, you talked with him/her so many times, so many hours spent on learning his/her way of thinking, behavior. There is nothing unexpected in gathering requirements (or however you will call it). Even if it isn't easy job to do. You been there, you know what to do.

sometimes it's better to let go...

when your work is what you love...

Personally I'm someone who can't work for 100 percent, it's impossible for me. Why? Because I always giving even more, I just really like what I'm doing. I always looking for new, better solution, I must improve my skills, increase my knowledge etc. It's just stronger than me.

And, as I notice, in IT this is common approach. We, developers, managers, designers, love what we are doing, this is our passion, this is not only 8 hours work, this is something more. We love challenges, we love problems, bugs, because these are the things, which gives us opportunity to test ourselves, to verify our skills and learn something new.
This attitude continues until we're motivated. And here comes the problem...

Look for experience, not only a work

years of work is not the experience

Recently I wrote that from time to time I'm doing interviews. Today I will wrote about another thing that is noticeable after short conversation with some of the candidates. It's fact, that in spite of year of work, they have no experience in programming, no knowledge. They know nothing.
It's little bit scary, because those people are sometimes over a dozen years older than me!

Studies won't make You a great programmer, but is it wrong?

studies suck!

It's common belief that any study (especially those relating with IT) don't bring any value for students. Many people thinks, that is just waste of time. If so, I got one question - why the hell they're starting to study? If they think it's useless, what's the reason? Why some of them spend their money on it?

Are You the best?

Is it possible to be the best?

Everyone want to be the best in something. Subject doesn't matter, everyone trying to be the best. It's obvious and there is nothing special in this. Of course, it's very hard to make it happen and IMHO it's almost impossible, because always, out there, is someone, who know more then we. Even if it will be very specified and narrow branch of knowledge. It's just happens. But is it wrong?