Introspection: pitfalls which hamper my development

2024-07-22 11:15:00

Here's a bigger version of the mindmap shown above.

After last week's introspection about my career, I've been doing a lot more thinking. I've put a lot of thought into which technical and non-technical skills I need to develop, to stay current in today's market. I'll talk about that another day.

I also realized that I left out one important thing in my mindmap: my personal pitfalls.

• I've mentioned that I feel I have way too little time to do everything I want. Well, one big timesink is Discord. I do a lot of mentoring on the Discord servers of Certification Station, /r/comptia, prof. Messer, APISecU and others. 
  
  If I'm very honest about it, yes this is somewhat to the benefit of others, but even without me they would still find mentoring from others. More importantly, it's great for my ego (dozens or hundreds of people uttering gratitude to me) which means, as my dear friend Menno puts it, "it's like crack cocaine to me". 
  
  I rely on Discord for the WICCA Summer School and for WICCON communications. But aside from that I really need to find a way to keep me off there. It takes hours every week, which I can spend elsewhere. 
  
  
• Imposter syndrome is a paralyzing thing I deal with, which stems from the clash between me wanting to know a lot about all the work I do and me realizing every single time that I really know very little. The more you know about something, the more you know how little you know. ;) 
  
  It's not a bad thing to know my limitations. But it is a bad thing if I let that realization get me so down that I get blocked mentally (sometimes even depressed). I need to find a healthier way of dealing with imposter syndrome. 
  
  
• Last week I'd already concluded that I shouldn't hire any junior employees into Unixerius any time soon. The fun thing is that in talks with Marli, my colleagues and my mother inlaw (who's a job coach) I've learned that I was actually doing things the Right Way (tm) after all! I was not dealing with my juniors badly, I was letting them make their own mistakes. So... I can feel less bad about that. :)

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