Thoughts on Thinking, Meditations on Mindset

So far, so...decent, I guess. I'd call my experience so far good, but I haven't done my best work yet, and I'm struggling with the "why." I think the answer might be somewhat related to my thinking style, and I KNOW the answer is related to my mindset habits. Today I'm going to break down both, one at a time, and see if I can view my work through these admittedly abstract lenses. But that may be a little tricky, because...

The Concrete Random Struggle is Real

Okay, so it's not a struggle, per se. In fact, I really like my thinking style. And I should, becaue I've been using it all my life. Being Concrete Random means I'm a tinkerer and I'm not afraid to take a leap of faith. Heck, I'm not even afraid to take a leap of faith all on my own. I work just fine without a partner or group. I'm a hands-on problem solver who would rather dive into code than read about it - to me, it's silly to sit in front of a text wall when I could be learning through experience. My thinking style has its downsides, too. I can't stand repeating my work; it's my pet peeve. I'd rather break my fingers carrying groceries than make a second trip, and I've lost count of how many times I've thrown my video game controller and quit for the day because my character died after two hours without saving..."there's no way I'm about to relive those two hours," I say to myself, as I move on to the next thing. Or the previous thing. Or the last thing. That's the thing, I don't really like doing things in the right order. Sometimes it's because I know I'll learn the whole lesson without having to read every section of the text, so I skip around. Other times it's beause I get bored doing a task step-by-step and decide to start another task (or three) instead. THis wouldn't be a problem for me except I lose my place sometimes, because I'm a horrible note taker. I don't write things down often, and I despise writing about things that I just did ("I can't stand repeating my work," he repeated) so I'm not the person you should call on if you need a brief written after a meeting I've attended.

At DBC, I feel at home with my style. Most of the work I do is solo work, which feels comfortable. And there's no rule about doing challenges in order, so I usually bounce around them, working on pieces of multiple challenges at once, and it feels natural to me. Best of all, programming itself seems to be suited for my style. Where else are you more encouraged to learn by doing than in a pair programming or solo challenge context? My least favorite part of this experience so far has been giving feedback and filling out the submission forms, for a reason that should be obvious by now: I just did the pair/ completed the work, so why should I have to revisit it in writing? Argh. Of course, if I got things done on time, maybe there would be less stress involved.

Fixing What's Broken and Breaking What's Fixed

And that's my biggest problem so far. At the time of this writing, there are three full days left in Week 4, and I haven't started in on any of the work yet. That's because I'm still scrambling to get through Week 3. Why so late? Because I froze and panicked and froze some more and flat-out let a whole 10 days pass without doing ANY DBC work. Why would I do something so self-sabotaging? Because not trying and not failing looks way nicer than trying and maybe failing...if you're stuck in a fixed mindset...

I've written about this at length on my WordPress blog, so I'll just summarize here. My biggest challenge at DBC is getting things done because I'm afraid of doing things wrong. My perfectionist streak is a mile wide, and being one hour late on an assignment, or making one tiny mistake, can be enough to make me say "screw this, it's over, it's ruined, on to the next thing." While my thinking style is perfect for this work, my overall mindset about the work is a constant liability. To counteract this, I've started making lists for myself every morning. The first item on the list is always something easy, so I can feel like I've accomplished something. With that accomplishment comes confidence, and then I can use my confidence to push back against the internal voice that's always warning me against doing anything that might make me look stupid if I fail.

To close, I'll give a very current example. I still have to code and refactor my solo challenge for this week, and it's been looming large for a few days. To cut back on the perfectionist panic, I got my mission plan and pseudocode written down early this morning because I knew they were the easy parts. Then I got my blog posts written (ahem) to build some strong momentum going into the evening. Tonight, I'll tackle the initial code with the help of the confidence I've been feeding myself. When I'm sure of myself, it's easier to remember that I'm doing DBC to learn, not to be right all the time. That mantra has helped me stay closer to a growth mindset than I've ever been. It's hard for me to put faith in myself, because I'm used to equating instant mastery with success and anything else with failure. But in this safe space, I almost look forward to my next mistake, because that means I'll have stretched outside my comfort zone even further.