January 15, 2014 at 9:06 pm
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Step Up, Don’t Step Back
January 16, 2014 at 3:33 am
This is a great point Chris, I have heard it quoted that 10% of your learning comes from direct study, 20% comes from mentoring and co-workers but 70% comes from working on projects, firefighting issues, developing new solutions etc. My experience would bear that out. There's is nothing like being stretched beyond your comfort zone to give you confidence afterwards. I cycle in my spare time and we planned a long tour with 90 mile days. At that point my max was 65 miles/day and I was a little nervous about my ability. I set my mind on a big day in preparation and did a 110 mile day and I knew I had more in me when I got home. It was completely liberating. From that day on I have laughed in the face of 90 miles, it holds no fear for me 🙂 It's exactly the same principle. The excitement in life is looking for your limits and still not being able to find them. It encourages you to keep doing more.
Very good article,
Thanks!
Mart
January 16, 2014 at 4:17 am
Also, step forward and you will find others will step forward with you who wouldn't have done so alone.
Gaz
-- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!
January 16, 2014 at 6:55 am
I agree with this advice. No regrets, though? I think everyone has regrets. But, like Frank, too few to mention. There are definite positives to stepping up but there are negatives. One negative is taking on too much and working yourself to death (not literal death, I hope). Another is finding you have no affinity for the tasks and embarass yourself. Overall, though, there are more positives than negatives.
This can apply to your personal life, too. Last year I volunteered to mentor a child in technology and was worried about how I would do. It's turned out wonderfully.
Tom
January 16, 2014 at 6:58 am
I was in the military too before becoming a DBA and I too volunteered for extra things and never regretted it.
The ones that don't try anything new never get to see the top of the mountain and view far off vistas.
January 16, 2014 at 6:58 am
Thanks for your note.
I am often asked about the Marine Corps training. There are many aspects to the training, and I remember being told about how they want to break you down. I use to think and it may be true, that they break you down because they want everyone to be able to respond to orders without questioning. I think it goes deeper. Just like what you said and found, you don't know how hard you can push until you have been pushed to what you feel is all you got, that you have nothing left and can't do a single thing more. When you reach that point. Just take one more little baby step, and then it is easy to see all the walls have always been in your mind.
Chris
January 16, 2014 at 6:59 am
I could not agree more.
January 16, 2014 at 7:10 am
Not military related but I was working on a project as a C++ developer. We were creating a web application using ASP calling COM objects developed in C++. Towards the end of the project the C++ work was drying up but there were many issues with the front end. The project manager asked two of us (both freelancers) if we were prepared to assist with the ASP. I said yes as long as they accepted that I had only read a number of articles and books on the technology and had no practical experience. The other chap said no, stating that he was a C++ developer.
My next contract was as an ASP web developer.
The other chap was without work for over 18 months.
The other chap is a nice bloke and I had seen how good and committed he was. Having said that, wrong choice by him.
Gaz
-- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!
January 16, 2014 at 7:14 am
Tom,
Thanks for your note.
Are there things I wished I would have done differently? Sure, but big picture wise my mistakes or things I wished I would have done differently, either appeared as the correct decision at that time or I was just plain stupid (Like skipping school to go party with the buds). Those poor decisions, taught me just as much if not more then the decisions that were positive.
Thanks again for taking time to post.
January 16, 2014 at 6:06 pm
I have to agree with the other posts on this subject. I've learned tremendous things about my profession, tools, languages, and myself by volunteering.
Right now I'm two years into learning to handle a Zoom-Boom (like a fork lift but the forks are on an extendable arm) to move 3,500 to 6,000 pound blocks of ice around. Talk about stretching into different arena's! :hehe: I do this for a non-profit organization that hosts a yearly ice sculpting event in North Pole, Alaska (see www.christmasinice.org for more info if you're curious).
I've never regretted stepping out of my comfort zone. Even if things don't turn out the way I hoped or planned, I still learn something valuable. And for me, that what really counts.
Steph Brown
January 17, 2014 at 7:10 am
Yeah, I agree Chris, this editorial was really thought provoking and interesting. I think it's easy to sometimes rest on your laurels and not push yourself but in my career I've seen that cause me to get locked into roles that require a lot of busy work or work you don't want to do because I wasn't pushing myself to stay on the cutting edge. I'm working on that already in stepping up my skill set. I've been locked into a job that doesn't give me any free time to work on new tech, and I've been stuck doing Dynamics AX development instead of more Web development that I would like to be doing. So, I've had a Pluralsight membership for a year now and have watched several videos and am now reading Dependency Injection in .NET after I got some re-exposure to that term. I'm on a track to stay more on the leading edge now and that's where we should all be. There's been so many advances and improvements in software in the last 5 years that make life better. Thanks for the lift Chris - nice article.
January 20, 2014 at 7:55 am
I think you are absolutely right.
Once I was asked to take over a different position in our company and I refused at the time, I did not really want to step up to that point.
Well, later on I thought it was a good job after all. But then, no chance to get there any longer ... the chance did not return.
Your life is what you make of it. Not more, and not less. The reason we are not doing something now feel like walls, but they are walls we have put up ourselves, mere shadows. It often requires so little to overcome this.
Look at it this way - if you don't now and then step out of your "usual position", you will loose contact even with that very position you occupy now. How do you know where you really are if you don't look at it from the outside? It's like holiday - if you never took holidays for years and then finally took a few weeks off and come back to the company: what a different view!
You don't know where you really are if you don't ever look from the outside once in a while.
January 20, 2014 at 8:32 am
Atradius (1/20/2014)
Once I was asked to take over a different position in our company and I refused at the time, I did not really want to step up to that point. Well, later on I thought it was a good job after all. But then, no chance to get there any longer ... the chance did not return.
But at the same time you have to know your own strengths and weaknesses. I will step up to any technical challenge. At the same time I also know that I don't have the temperament to do permanent personnel management. A short term project team that I don't have to do the reviews, etc. works for me.
And sometimes that is a very important thing to know.
----------------
Jim P.
A little bit of this and a little byte of that can cause bloatware.
January 20, 2014 at 9:08 am
Gary Varga (1/16/2014)
Also, step forward and you will find others will step forward with you who wouldn't have done so alone.
Amazing how that works.
Great advice Chris. Sometimes the most enjoyment comes from getting out of those comfort zones.
Jason...AKA CirqueDeSQLeil
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