Week 1 — Innovation & hard/smart work

Creativity, meaningful connections, self-consciousness and smart working are fundamental concepts to become a successful person in your personal and professional life. This week’s videos and lectures are about improve our creativity, chances of changing, learning, relationships and to understand how our mind works.

There are many ways to develop our communications skills and get meaningful social interactions. As software developer, the soft skills are essential. Being able to communicate successfully our ideas and to build trust in our laboral relationships will make an great impact in our careers. How to talk to anyone book provide several advices to reach these goals. Smiling genuinely, giving the spotlight and using analogies related to listener are some few examples on how we could improve our speaking skills. Trying to apply these advices could help me to boost my career.

How to talk to anyone sketch note

Stanford Professor, John Ousterhout, come up with profound life lessons for software developers. These lessons are valuable truths that will help us to make easier our life as developers. John Ousterhout tells that intuition should be used to ask questions, to understanding complex concepts is needed many examples related to, and being honest about our ignorance will open a lot of doors.

We must understand that ideas are useless if we don’t execute them. When you execute an ideas, it works like a multiplier, that worth millions. For example, an good idea with a brilliant execution means 10 multiplied by 10,000,000. This worth 100,000,000 dollars. Each idea I would have, I should execute it and see if it is worthy.

Autopilot is a growing problem that is affecting us in many aspects of our lifes. By our human nature and modern life, autopilot is triggering negative habits. We are acting like zombies, and we are not conscious in our daily actions and activities. I’m working to obtain a work-life harmony, so I need to take action and be conscious in my daily habits. This article describes 3 key pressures that modern life generates. If I have knowledge about these pressures, it’s going to be easier to avoid them. Then, it’s necessary to identify my own autopilot type. In my case, I’m a Pacers, so doing the recommended actions, such setting a bedtime alert and starting with the most important stuff, will help me to take conscious about my life.

X Workflow

General process is a cycle in which we live while we do things to work or understand the universe. It represents a great leap to success. This process is very used at manufacturing industry, but this can be applied in every kind of process or problem. As developer, probably we’ll solve any type of problem, so it’s important to know that exist methodologies for that.

This cycle consist in:

1. Problem discovery. In this step, the data recollection is fundamental. Then, you analyze the data and establish the first hypothesis and tests.
2. Problem definition. Here, you just define the problem and its constriants.
3. Search for solutions. Research, brainstorming, modeling and prototyping occur in this phase.
4. Specifications. In this phase, you develop the solution. Specifing background, proposing solution (with its black box) and writting all the functional and technical specifications are required.
5. Implementation. Every that was designed in the last step is currently used.
6. Data analysis. Collecting data and analyze it for future projects.
7. Planning for future.

This is a process that we could use to improve our process or to solve problems. This methodology applied in the right moment and right issue, will bring great results.

In the Ted Talk Religion, evolution and the ecstasy of self-transcendence, Jonathan Haidt describes how the spirituality raises in the human conscience. He explain how the political and religious movements, particularly war, brings people together, and that bringing them together opens up the possibility of extraordinary transcendent experiences. Those collective emotions create unselfish people. Encora is a community, this a place where people can truly be themself and create meaningful connections.

Thanks to Creative Thinking Hacks video, I learned a lot of useful hacks to improve my creatvity and solving problems. New ideas are made of other ideas, so looking for inspiration and reseraching about the topic are good options to apply. If I want to find new ways of thinking, removing unnecessary preconceptions is fundamental. As a future software developer, I will always look for solutions, so starting to work hard and smart is crucial. Scott Berkun also tells that finding the right environment is important, because something different triggers creativity to each one. At the end, Berkum provide us 6 hacks for creativeness:

1. Journal. Writing every idea in a journal is best option, because of the brain limits.
2. Escape. Relaxing and doing an activity that one’s like is useful for generate new ideas.
3. Invert. Give ideas or/and solve the opposite problem from the one you are trying to solve.
4. Find a partner or rival. This keeps motivation and continuous improvement.
5. Fails. Doing prototypes and taking risks.
6. Switch modes. Trying to solve the problem with different senses (visually, verbally, physically).

This video provided a lot of good information to solve problemas, and as engineer, this is pure gold.

Scott Berkun also talked about How Progress Really Happens. This was an interesting talk. For progress, change is totally needed, but changing requires a lot of effort, risks and power. It doesn't means that changing is impossible, but big progress could requires a lot of sacrifice and even time. Scott as he did in the past video provides us playbooks. These playbooks guide us to become change channelers.

The individual consist in a structured step by step guide. Thanks to this playbook, I already know that the first step is to plan or to develop a prototype, ande then showing success. After these first two steps, finding allies follows. And finally, ask for resources and repeat. This looks as plan for developing new projects and new software projects.

The next video How to Master Anything describes how you can learn any skill and to become an expert in that same skill. As the video shows, the experts continuously do mental representations. This way they recreate experience, make accurate indicators and condense information. To master any skill, this is necessary. Learning a new skill or mastering one consist of 4 phases. These 4 phases are: Hitting a limit, prolonged frustration, sudden breakthrough and rapid progress. Deliberate practice is unique form to reach the mastery. It consist in purposeful practice methods and expert coaching. Purposeful practice includes specific goal, intense focus, immediate feedback and frequent discomfort.

If I want to master a skill, I should be aware that this is the process to follow.

Kathy Sierra gives the talk Making Badass Developers. In this conference, Kathy exposes that programmers are considered as humanoids. When in reality, they’re just humans with limited cognitive capabilities. Sierra consider that cognitive performance is like a limited container. We require a lot of energy using willpower and doing things with efforts take cognitive resources. Splitting skill into sub-skills is best choice to prevent overwhelming. Also using diverse and excellent examples increase the speed of learning. Practice makes permanent, so is important to do it well.

This week, I had some meetings with some Encora departments. OM is a very important department for each office, because makes Encora a place to belong. Intro to labs explained us its true role in Encora. This department is full of potential, they have a clear vision and I already know how they contribute to Encora. Finally, I learned that Encora is a community, a safe space and a place where you can continuously learn.

In conclusion, this week was exciting. The reason is the amount of useful information that I got. I hope apply every concept and knowledge during all the Academy and in my personal life.