Finding Clarity….
“Be intentional about every decision you make” — Olomo 2020.
Those words rang in my head all year and I must say it helped me make smarter decisions. This year was one of my toughest so far as it was filled with so many highs and lows, it was a rollercoaster of emotions for me, lots of things happened, that made my 12 months seem like 2 years.
I joined the She Code Africa coding Bootcamp in June hoping it'll help me decide on if that’s the road I wanted to go through. Those three months were very very tough, I was barely sleeping and could barely keep up with the boot camp. My mentor, Kaffy was very helpful as she was always available to help me whenever I had roadblocks, she made it a bit easier for me. Honestly, I barely scaled through and I managed to build a few working projects and wrote several articles. There were days when I wanted to just give up and cry my eyes out, many thanks to the people that were there for me during those crazy days ( I’m not calling names cause that would take a whole paragraph, lol).
At this point, I was slowly approaching the end of my NYSC (July) and I still had no idea about what I wanted to do with my life. Honestly, the fear of life after service was a lot to handle as I didn’t know what I wanted. I eventually went with Product Management but still wrote code occasionally. I got a role that I absolutely love by July and it’s been several months of bliss. I’ve learned a lot within those few months and my colleagues are awesome.
Growth
Ah yes, “Growth”. What does it even mean to begin with? what are the success criteria? what are the metrics used to measure it?. These and many more questions are what I asked myself as I pondered about the next phase of my life now that I had finally gotten clarity on what I wanted to do.
First, I decided to inculcate the habit of reading again so I decided to do one book a month, to begin with. I started with the book “Atomic Habits” by James Clear cause I knew for a fact that I would most likely not be consistent with my reading, I mean I could barely get a 30 days streak on Duolingo. Well, I read several books afterward (currently doing 2 books a month now) and have managed to be consistent with Duolingo (102 days). I must say that doing these things had a ripple effect on every other aspect of my life as I am much more disciplined with everything I do. I’ve officially said goodbye to procrastination.
I am now very deliberate about my learning (Road to becoming a 10X PM) and recently begun 20 books reading challenge. It’s also worth mentioning that I became a Technical Coordinator at She Code Africa and can now finally give back to the community that helped me grow. Learning with aspiring PMs has been so much fun and I can’t wait to see what we achieve next year.
To sum it all up, having clarity on what I wanted to do made my life a whole lot easier and gave me unparalleled peace of mind as I was finally where I wanted to be. Although there’s still a whole lot more that I want to do/achieve, I’m happy with the way things turned out. I used to jump on every opportunity that came my way but that mostly proved to be counterproductive, I became intentional with every decision I made and not just about my career, my entire life.
I hope everyone finds clarity and also attain peace of mind. I am very optimistic about the new year (2021) although I am not sure I want to see any more surprises as 2020 was definitely a handful. Here’s to a new year with lots of growth in all aspects of our lives, cheers!!!.
