If you’ve been following this project, or, are reading them altogether, you may be wondering – what happened to June? To keep things brief, I had a lot of personal things happening suddenly and all at once towards the end of May, and so I decided to take a hiatus. I felt that, if I continued to make demands of myself, that I would either have trouble upholding them, or not get the most out of it. So I took a small break, and gradually have been leaning back into blogging. I did not set myself to start again on June 1st as I feel a slow transition is necessary, especially to return to where I was before. But now I have returned to the project (and the blog), and now I want to talk about this month’s focus: my career.
While I’m happy with my job, my company, and the endless support I receive from those that I work with, I feel that there’s more I can do on my end to make that experience even better. For the longest time, I’ve struggled with impostor syndrome, but at this job, I’ve had so much reassurance, both from what I’ve done and the praise that I’ve received, that those feelings are much less of a problem for me. In fact, I realize that those feelings weighed me down, and there was no reason for them to be there in the first place. So that had me thinking – what else am I doing that’s holding me back from achieving more? And what can I continue to do to ensure that I don’t have those feelings again? Here’s what I came up with:
Learn something new.
Having a career means constantly having new things to learn as the field evolves – and in technology, this is no exception. I’m always learning on the job and gaining experience, but I’d also like to take the time to venture into something that I haven’t before or something that I don’t have that much exposure to in comparison to what I know. I have a few topics in mind that I believe will give me more insight into the development process in current and future projects. After, I’d also like to reflect on older projects and consider what I would have done with this new knowledge.
I’ve always been the type to want my varied questions answered, which is what makes the development process so interesting to me. At work and at home, every question or potential solution that pops into my mind becomes a Google search. And the results of learning something new or figuring something out, no matter how small, is so validating. That being said, I’d like to work in my free time towards something that’s indirectly applicable to my day-to-day, but still very important. And while I do spend some of my free-time coding for fun or scouting out interesting project ideas, I tend to do so within my comfort zone. I’d like to see what I can do by taking on something I’ve never done before!
Keep the workspace tidy.
Since I work from home, I have a dedicated space for working. It’s also pretty dark in there, and during time off in the summer that means I’m somewhere sunny instead of in there. But I do have lots of things that could be organized better, and would make my space more welcoming despite the lack of sun. Plus, there’s probably lots there that I accumulated and don’t need, and now would be a good time to go through that.
Read a self-help book.
In the last two months, I read about 20 books…but none were self-help! The last book I read was Lean In, right before I had to go to a meeting that I was fairly nervous about. While I couldn’t relate to some of the things in the book, there were a lot of things I could resonate with (like impostor syndrome) that opened my eyes to what my feelings were towards my abilities at work. There are plenty of books on my TBR that are in the realm of personal development, and I’d like to read at least one book this month on that list. I also have a reading list from my company that provides recommendations and other general career development books. I’m not sure how many companies have lists like this but it’s a nice-sized list!
Reintroduce the master list.
I talked in my to-do list post about creating a master to-do list, which is essentially the list of all things that need to be accomplished. And to not make things overwhelming, I take tasks from the master list and organize them in my weekly planner. This worked out so well for me in college, and I had one for my first big work project, but since then I haven’t used it. Since I am now getting a larger workload, I figure that now is a really good time to reintroduce this strategy and make me more organized.
Here’s the start to my career-oriented, very short-term goals for July. I have a couple more things I’ll be doing this month as well that are a bit more specific to what I do. What are your goals this month? Let me know below.
Sincerely,
Julie Anna
