When learning a new skill or trade, you are undoubtedly going to come across obstacles. These obstacles can either be the walls that prevent you from going further, or they can become a great vantage point, once you overcome them.
During my first three weeks of Dev Bootcamp's Phase 0 I have come across many obstacles. I have spent hours researching, and I have learned amazing things along the way. Most of these challenges that I've faced I have been able to overcome, with the judicious use of questions. I am immersed in a community of like-minded individuals, who are working together to complete the tasks set for us by the enigmatic mentors of Dev Bootcamp. Every week we are faced with a slew of challenges, and with little official guidance we tromps through them together.
Peer pairing has become one of my favorite activities. It gives me the opportunity to make friends across the country while collaborating on these challenges. Often times the answers don't come from either one of individually, but instead one of us inspires the other to think about the problem differently and then we make the leap to the answer. Even when our technical skills are in disparity, the collaboration makes that irrelevant. We draw from our collective pool of knowledge and each bring our own inspiration. Two heads truly are better than one.
The greatest challenge that I still face is one of time-boxing. Recently, without knowing it, my thinking style has changed from Abstract-Sequential to Abstract-Random. This was the result of incredible changes in my life combined with great introspection. While I can logically understand that this process works for a great number of people, either my Abstract-Random mind doesn't want to focus on a single task that long, or I slip back into the Abstract-Sequential mindset and forget that time exists. The more challenging the problem the more likely is the latter. When I have been able to tear myself away from a challenge, I am left with the feeling that I had just gotten started. When I return, I often feel as though I waste the fist few minutes reorienting myself on the challenge.
I've just decided, while typing this, that consistency is the key. Instead of Pomodoro's 25-5 split, I will attempt a 50-10 split, and work my way down to smaller increments. A lesson I learned when I first started exercising is that small, incremental changes are what defines progress. Trying to take giant leaps and crashing isn't success, even if the task was completed. Given this current time frame, I only have 3 more minutes to finish writing and post this, so I'm going to stop here.