Meditation is a keystone habit I rely on to manage my mental health day-to-day and something that I learned from this is how progress is measured in the little things. Not the just the overall result. For instance, Michael Jordan becoming the legend that he is in basketball is not solely due to the “I want to be the greatest” mentality. Anyone can think about being the best ever, but what about the physical aspects of that? Due to his manical way he practiced all the little things – jumpshot, 3-pointers, crossovers, dunks, rip throughs, defensive stance, etc., he could effectively back up his mentality on the court and in the game. Progress came from slowly being slightly faster at another maneuver, making one more shot than last time, jumping a fraction of an inch higher…you get it. Him being considered a G.O.A.T is a sum of both mentality, practice, and experience.
Saving a few, virtually all of us are not going to be the greatest software engineers of all time (G.S.W.E.O.A.T anyone?), but even us mere humans still live lives of progress – growing is a fundamental aspect of our careers. Understanding that progress is really measured in those smaller improvements over time, appreciating them, and continuing forward is how to become better technically. This is something I am learning now and hoping that you remind yourself as well!
I sometimes fall into the trap of comparing myself to the idealized timeline of a Post-Baccalaureate student: acing two-at-a-time courses each quarter, participating in all the Hackathons and career fairs with projects on a polished resume, LeetCoding over the summer and getting 2 – 3 internships before landing multiple top-salary job offers and selecting one to secure a merry career-change come graduation. I consider this an ideal, and there are many talented students in this program that do achieve this, which is awesome! Comparing yourself to this timeline can be a double-edged sword because on one hand, it gives you well-defined targets to shoot for, and on the other hand, not reaching all of these targets can be mentally draining. Learning to accept where you currently are (or may not be) in your idealized timeline/self and choosing to continue incrementing slowly towards that is a solution. Are you able to do more than you were able to last quarter? Can you solve one more LeetCode problem than you were able to last week? Have you learned a new command or tool today of whose existence you were not aware of prior? You are progressing. If you flew through this program, awesome, keep it up! If you didn’t and you hoped to, it’s a bitter truth to confront, but even 1% better is still better than 0%. Compare yourself with who you were yesterday moreso than anything else. And then continue to progress as much as you reasonably can.
Personally, I didn’t follow the ideal timeline to a T. The company I interned for this past summer reached out to extend an offer in April, a few months before starting. I had interviewed for them a few months before April and thought I didn’t perform well. Perhaps someone backed out of the internship and they reached out to me to fill it – not ideal but it was still a way in. I performed reasonably well during the intership and got a good return offer to join them after graduation. Since my LeetCode skills were admittedly not great at the time of interning, these past couple of weeks I try to start the day off by doing one problem despite already having a job. The main point of this example is that an ideal timeline to progress is not set in stone and to not exactly follow it is not complete failure, as long as you continue to progress. Keep iterating over and getting better at those little things, and you will progress to where you want to in your own timeline. Best of luck!
