I'm not sure if everybody here knows that I have a background as an elite athlete. Since I was 12 years old I knew that I wanted to best in the world in orienteering. Today I've accepted that I'm just another person in a long line of athletes who tried but fail to reach the top. I will not reach my goal. The big reason I gave up was an injury that doesn't allow me to train as hard as needed to reach the absolute top. I've been lucky. I got to spend most of my life among some truly brilliant and dedicated athletes. I've also had opportunity to compete and train and really high level before that torn tendon in the back of my leg proved broke that dream. I still do train a lot but nowhere near as much. What I see more and more though is how useful my athletic background has been to me in my professional life as a developer. Hopefully, my thoughts around this can be of use to you readers too.
This topic is vast but I aim to focus on some areas I feel more strongly about and I aim to do this as a series of short posts instead of a huge one. The topics include:
- Dare to aim for the next level (This post)
- Being evaluated can be tough, but is the key to improvement
- Being coached and self-evaluation
- Grit and a growth mindset
- Strive to improve your performance rather than expand your knowledge
- Routines and preparation can help you perform better
- The importance of sleep and recovery
Dare to aim for the next level
I don't think I know any really good athletes who succeed in reaching their goals more often than they fail. Many times their goals are borderline impossible. Knowing that pushes them to show up for training multiple times every day, even when it hurts, the weather sucks, all friends are having a party and so on. It also pushes them to do their best, not only at every single training but also 24/7. It makes them eat better, sleep more, avoid situations that could interfere with the training etc, etc.
A little bad weather won't stop an athlete with a goal!
Todd Quackenbush
This is a level of dedication I rarely see in my professional life. And honestly, I don't expect it there either because in our work it's not a win-lose situation like it is in sports. BUT I think a lot of people can become vastly better at their work by pushing their own limits harder than they do today. You don't have to aim to be the best in the world. You just need to aim to become significantly better than you are today.
Quality is more important than Quantity
Look, I know that life happens. For most of you, it's family and friends that keep you from putting in the extra hours you think you need to become much better. In my case, it's always been sports. When I trained the most I did 20h of endurance training in my high weeks, that means at least another 20h of preparation, analyzing and practical stuff. That's fine, you can still improve more than most people you will ever meet if you are a bit smart about it.
Here are some of my tricks for becoming much better without putting in far more time that you could start doing tomorrow. I will dive deeper into the importance of evaluation in a later post. But for now, I suggest you try these quick tips for a few weeks to see if it works for you.
Set a goal for each day
- Set a limit for how long you are going to work today.
- Decide what you WANT to get done today and write it down on a post-it with some rough time estimations.
- Work like hell to complete your list. Cross out the tasks you complete.
- Reflect on how you worked today.
The reason you are setting the limit in #1 is that if you allow yourself to just keep working longer you will not be forced to push yourself to be more effective. So #1 and #2 together should re-frame your mindset to make sure that every day matters. Not every day will be a good day, and that's fine! But you should be able to get more good days if you practice this method. And here is the kicker, if you are more effective you get more done. When you get more done you get more experience and you become better, faster and get even more done the next period.
For #3 there is a very important thing. NEVER CHEAT. If you push through low-quality stuff, just to complete your daily goal, you just failed x2. I don't think I need to explain this...
For #4, you can do this either in the office or on your way home. It's just a short reflection on what you did. You have the list to put it in black and white if you made it. Spend some extra attention on things you struggled with today. Failing the estimation doesn't matter so much. What you are looking for is the parts of the day that you weren't very productive and then think about why. Was the office situation disturbing you? Did you avoid starting a new task because lunch was closing in? Do you always get stuck on this type of tasks? And so on. If you need to, you can note these down but I would do it in my head and then write it down in the part I will explain next.
Make a plan for what to work on every week or bi-weekly
Reserve a spot on your calendar for doing a short evaluation of what you are doing well and what you could do better. Use the takeaways you had from your daily reflections and summarize them down to the most important points. The important thing is that you will use this evaluation to set some goals for what to improve the next period.
I do it bi-weekly because we have 2-week sprints.
I recommend that you build your own evaluation template. And more importantly, that you let the template evolve over time. With that said, my current template is this:
- What have I done really well?
- What was tough?
- What made me happy/motivated?
- What made me unhappy?
- Can I make any of the unhappy things more enjoyable by changing my perspective?
- What should I continue doing?
- What should I not do next two weeks?
- What should I start doing next two weeks? (Schedule it if needed)
The template I use for my bi-weeklies right now.
If I was only working with coding my points might have been different. They key is to adapt it to your situation. Every point on this list should feel worth it to you.
Take away
Spending more time on learning is not the only way to get better. I would say a much more important step is to make sure that the time you already put in counts more. The first step to do that is for you to start pushing your limits every day and start reflecting more on what you can improve.
My suggestion for a very easy way to start doing this:
- Start by deciding where you want to take your career. What do you want to spend most focus on improving?
- Spend 5 minutes every to decide your goals for the day, make it hard but not impossible to complete them. You should complete the goals on most of your good days.
- Spend 5 minutes at the end of every day to reflect on how you did.
- Do a weekly or bi-weekly ~15 minutes evaluation/planning that you write down.