2022 was the second year of my professional experience in software development .Yes, I thought software development and coding were different. I thought I would not get tired of waking up to provide solutions every day. I thought I would enjoy making people's experience on the web seamless and be super happy to recreate beautiful designs and always have proud moments but guess what??? I was disappointed.
2022 was the year I learned that intentionality cuts across everything you do in life or decide to do because you wouldn't always wake up excited to go to work. You wouldn't always wake up to know tasks are waiting for you, and you see it as a challenge to be a better engineer. You wouldn't just be continually in love with helping people by solving problems. You wake up somedays and you just want to live your life for yourself, you question your decisions if you are on the right path if you wouldn't be better at something else, if you are dragging the work behind and if the company or clients you are working for would be better off without you, yet I kept going. I'm glad I didn't give up because It made me stronger. Of course, I had people that helped and believed in me all through.
Things I learned in this season of my life and what you should do when you find yourself in this type of situation:
Ask for help🤲: This is key when you are going through anything at all. Always ask for help from your boss, your team lead, your colleagues ensure you ask for help and don't be mute about what you are going through this. You would find that you would get out of it faster than if you decide to solve it alone.
Be part of a community🙎♂️🙍♀️: As much as you want to have the title self-taught or you really love your space and like doing things alone, be part of a community. This will help you scale through faster because you would find people who are going through the same challenges you are going through and you can help each other which leads me to my next point.
Be intentional about skilling up💻: One of the important things I learned was that the reason i was facing this challenge was because i was lagging behind skill wise. Yes, you grow while coding or at work but technology isn't going to wait for you it keeps changing so make sure you are getting better at all times don't depend on what you had learned before. Push to learn new things everyday and having a community would help you because then you can learn together with other people who would keep you accountable.
Be intrinsically motivated💪: Intrinsic motivation is the act of doing something without any obvious external rewards. You do it because it's enjoyable and interesting. This just means go back to the feeling when you started coding or building software because you wanted to learn and not because you would get any reward or wage for it. When we all started learning software development, what kept a number of us going was how we wanted to learn and build interesting things. Even if you were driven by money, for the first year or first six months it was registered in your brain that with what you knew nobody would hire you and this kept you motivated.
Stay strong🤞: I'm adding this point because many people may break down during these period. You might have thoughts to quit, you would most likely have imposter syndrome and sometimes you might even loose your job in the process of this, but regardless stay strong. You are not a failure, you are not unintelligent, it is just a roadblock and all you have to do is move the blocks away and create a path for yourself or find a new path.
Finally, no part of our life would go by without challenges or blockers, having the right mindset and being open and vulnerable about it would help you get better faster.
Happy new year people 🥳. Let's do big things this year📌😎.