2017 passed by pretty quickly and so it’s even more important to reflect on all the progress that I have made and what could be improved for 2018. Enjoy! :)
📄 Table of contents
- My goals for 2017
- Getting a job in programming
- Writing an article per week
- A new non-profit goal
- Keep coding for at least 4 times a week
- Keep studying law at a public university
- Read at least 10 books
- Stay consistent with fitness ( at least 3 times a week)
- Looking forward
“Don’t wish it was easier, wish you were better. Don’t wish for less problems, wish for more skills. Don’t wish for less challenge, wish for more wisdom.” — Jim Rohn
My goals for 2017
Most of the time I have a well defined set of goals for the next year.
For 2017 some of those were:
- Getting a job in programming
- Write 1 article a week
- Giving something back to society with a new non-profit goal
- Keep coding for at least 4 times a week
- Keep studying law at a public university
- Read at least 10 books
- Stay consistent with fitness ( at least 3 times a week)
In the following lines I will examine the progress of each goal in more detail.
Getting a job in programming
This was huge for me. In May 2016 I quite my job in tax advisory to get into programming. Since then I was studying and learning very hard to develop the skill set to work as a developer.
I worked through the Free Code Camp curriculum and connected with local developers as much as possible. Each day I was watching videos, reading articles, programming small algorithms or attending some programming-related meetups.
At the end of 2016 I thought I was ready to apply for a job in this field. Luckily I was already connected to some programmers in the local community, which acted as a gateway for an interview.
One important note here: I was only able to connect to local programmers because I was introducing myself as a beginner on events and offering volunteer work to THEIR projects. I did this many times and followed the projects that had a good working flow and learning experience.
Due to all the work with local people, online presence and some sort of presentation skill I was able to get my first job as a developer pretty quickly in March.
It was surprising to me how fast this goal could be accomplished.
Here is a video of a talk me and Robert gave during one of our non-profit events.
Writing an article per week
With this goal I wanted to stay on track with all tech related news. Also I wanted to get into the habit of writing more in english (which is not my native language) and build an online presence.
I also think that writing has always been very powerful, but is even more important in this era. As an article is written, it can be very easy to share it across multiple platforms and get feedback from different communities.
Writing for me is an important tool to learn things. Formulating a thought on paper with your own words is much different than simply repeatedly read information.
However, I came to acknowledge the time investment that writing regularly demands. Quality suffers incredibly when not enough time is invested. That’s one of the reasons my articles constantly lack depth. But this year quantity was more important than quality for me in terms of writing articles.
I found medium.com to be a great platform for articles in general and hashnode.com for more programming related stuff.
A new non-profit goal
Giving back is always important. So many opportunities and relationships simply arise because of non-profit work. This year I wanted to do something non-profit in the tech sector.
Since Free Code Camp helped my a lot when starting to program, I wanted to give back to this organization. Free Code Camp has several local groups, where the students come together and exchange on their progress.
So I started to contribute regularly to host all the local meetups in Vienna for this year. A separate article can be found here.
In short: I was able to create value for many, many people in the programming community in Vienna — success! :)
Keep coding for at least 4 times a week
Building a habit is one of the most important things when to learning a new skill. As Zig Zigler put it very eloquently:
“Repetition is the mother of learning, the father of action, which makes it the architect of accomplishment.”
For me it meant to code whenever possible. Even just a few lines of code is enough to stay on track. Of course this goal was a lot easier to achieve when I started to work as a developer.
Keep studying law at a public university
Since learning is literally the most important thing in life, I like to “officially” commit myself to learning in a public learning institution. In my case, this is university. It is especially beneficial when your studies are about different things than programming. It provides a perspective and allows you to see things from a different view.
This goes very well for law. As I see it, law is the science of organizing societies, and therefore is a great extension for my work in computer engineering.
This year’s focus was on:
- Criminal law and criminal procedure law
- European Law
- Company and Capital Markets Law
- Public Procurement Law
- IT-Law
I also love the dynamics of having different social settings. Working half-time as well as studying the rest of the time allows my to build different relationships with different minds. It’s amazing to see how people from different fields think differently.
Read at least 10 books
Reading is one of the most valuable learning experiences for me and therefore each year a goal. It is important to note that this goal aims at reading books, which are different than those I have to read for university or work. I try to enrich my mind as much as possible with different mindsets and opinions in order to sharpen my mind.
Some book recommendations from this year:
- Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
- Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration by Ed Catmull, Amy Wallace
- The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies by Erik Brynjolfsson, Andrew McAfee
- How Google Works by Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg
Stay consistent with fitness ( at least 3 times a week)
This one was very easy for me, since I am used to do more sport per week anyways.
The challenge I found in this year was to balance motivation between workouts and pursuing my programming goals. Aiming for a balanced schedule is the real challenge when you constantly expose yourself to new ideas.
The last months I came to the conclusion that focusing on more balanced activities like stretching, strength and stamina is more powerful for health than simply building strength. Especially Yoga keeps being a great addition for my sport schedule and benefits my life enormously.
Looking forward
2017 was an incredible year and I am excited for the next year with all the new challenges. I am especially eager to use all the new technology that keeps arising.
Stay motivated! :)
Thanks for reading my article! Feel free to leave any feedback!
Daniel is a LL.M. student in business law, working as a software engineer and organizer of tech related events in Vienna. His current personal learning efforts focus on machine learning (and ultimately artificial intelligence ). Connect on: