15th of November 2017
Do you ever miss former parts of your life?
And when you do, do you fight to get them back ?
I remember it happening very clearly to me with music. From 7 to 14, I played the bassoon and studied music theory at the municipal conservatory. I had to let it go because high school was taking too much of my time. After a four-year break, I was missing music so deeply that I picked it up again, with 🎷 saxophone this time.
A similar feeling came to me a few months a ago, and ended up in me quitting my job as a Project Manager to pursue what I was longing for.
As I’ve previously mentioned, what I missed was science — or more precisely scientific thinking.
Before spending 5 years in business school, I passed the baccalauréat (French equivalent of the A-levels) in Science 🔍 with a specialisation in Mathematics. Most of my week was math, physics, chemistry, biology and geology, and I relished it.
When I bowed out of my job in August, I hadn’t done any proper scientific training since 2011. Resigning to study programming allowed me to get back into it. Thankfully, I had kept all of my math notes from my final year of high school, alongside some handy workbooks.
I’m now happily and fiercely challenging my rusty math skills.
There’s a lot I have to learn again, but it’s a delight nonetheless.
8th of November 2017
I am getting into a very nice study routine. I owe it to a few elements — let’s stop calling everything ‘life hacks’, please — that influence both my mindset and my physical environment. Here’s what has proved to be helpful so far:
- 💻 A decent workstation, a real desk & chair combo, with the irreplaceable cacti, candles, and tea. Allows for an uncluttered work setting, with just enough white space to focus properly.
- 📓 Well-organised notebooks, lists, and tracking sheets. For my Python MOOC, for daily to-dos, for habits I want to grow. Helps me being accountable, witnessing my progress, and seeing the bigger picture. Just like…
- 🙏 Meditation. Allows me to see clearly through the day, and to get better at casting anxiety away when it arises. Thanks to daily sessions, I’m getting closer to ‘you own the day’ than to ‘the days owns you’.
- 📱 Optimised push notifications. Most of my apps’ notifications are disabled, and my phone is always in silent mode. I don’t want any device randomly tapping on my shoulder to get my attention.
- 👽 Knowing myself. Knowing at what time of the day I perform best. Being aware of when my attention might drift away.
- 💜 Supportive relatives, who I can talk to about my progress, excitement and dubiousness.
Several of my friends confess they have a hard time studying on their own. They mention lacking the motivation or the willpower.
What I wish to highlight with my above list, is that this is nothing unconquerable. This isn’t bound to happen. You can actually do something about it.
It’s up to you to shape your environment & your mind in a way that will reduce distractions and improve your ability to focus.
These pieces of advice are part of a larger design I live by for happiness and fulfilment. Be grateful, breathe, and look around.
1st of November 2017
While writing this week’s piece, I realised it deserved a special place. It was an article on its own.
You can find my entry here.
25th of October 2017
Once a month,
web agency Spintank and Think Tank Renaissance Numérique invite authors, scholars, researchers to discuss technology and society coming together. Last Thursday’s guest was author and senior lecturer Romain Badouard. Romain has been investigating how Internet and democracy influence each other.
‘We went from governing infrastructures to governance by infrastructures.’
This was my 3rd of these conferences, and honestly my favourite so far. The talk and Q&A tackled ethics, filter bubbles, algorithms, public debate, surveillance, fake news, hate speech moderation, and so on. If you want to know more, this article comes back on the event ( 🇫🇷 for French readers only).
Overall, the past few days have been quite gratifying, and productivity has altogether returned. I can happily say that I finished the 1st version of my maze game in Python — for which I got a 💯 100% from fellow OpenClassrooms students.
In this respect, it came upon me that having been a Web Project Manager helps a lot with testing. It’s really the same reasoning: try to find all the tiny mistakes that could have happened, try absolutely all the use cases.
Bulletproof testing is doing everything you can to🔨 break the damn program.
In my quest for productivity and mindfulness, I went back to meditation, which I had neglected the past weeks.
Using Headspace is quite beneficial to me. With daily sessions of 15 min, I definitely see improvement in how I handle anxiety, which is very encouraging. One of the app’s great assets is the wide range of topics it offers to work on: stress, sleep, acceptance, focus, creativity, and balance, among others. Looking forward to trying out more of those! 👌
As you may remember, my mission for this week was to get a proper workstation. Something more convenient than the good ol’ couch & coffee table combo.
And I did! Putting all of this together was great fun. I also threw in my cool 🌵 cacti, 🔥 candles, and 📝 notepad. And remember…
Either you run the day, or the day runs you. –Jim Rohn
18th of October 2017
I recently reached two small milestones on this thrilling yet uncertain journey.
The one I’m the most proud of is having some material on my GitHub account. The two projects there are CLI Python games made for the MOOC I’m currently working on.
Finally having something to show allowed me to send my very first internship application out in the wild. This may not seem significant— and I obviously don’t know the outcome of it. Nonetheless, when you start from scratch, building new skills and making baby steps, it’s an utterly satisfying feeling.
As much as I manage to get things done, I’m not as efficient as I’d like to be. I’m yet to fall back into a smooth routine.
But let’s not fixate on it — let’s adopt a problem-solving perspective instead. A tremendous asset that I lack of to set up a good working environment is… A desk.
A nice, convenient desk. Studying on my couch and my coffee table has repeatedly proved to not be adequate for proper work days. First, because it prevents me from having separate settings for work and for leisure. Second, because ergonomics. ‘No shit, Sherlock’, right?
Thus my mission for next week is to get a decent workstation. ’Cause even though Instagram feeds you handsome people with laptops on beds, nothing beats a proper desk.
11th of October 2017
After a month and a half of travelling here and there,
I am now back home. It was good to move around, and visit Amsterdam, Tel Aviv, Leuven, and the gorgeous Basque country. But now’s the time to fall back into routine, for more efficient studying.
I am currently working on a maze game for my Python MOOC, which is proving to be an entertaining subject to train my newfound skills.
Since I’m diving into tech, I am on the lookout for interesting reads. I’ve recently gone through Product Hunt’s new eBook, ‘How to build a career in tech’. Various founders, authors and investors share their experience, insights and great advice on different topics.
The ‘Change career path’ and ‘Becoming an entrepreneur’ chapters were notably thought-provoking for me. I definitely look forward to reading some more from Product Hunt.
This past week, I also made a step towards security. At first I tried 1password.
My experience went as follows: I spent time subscribing, installing a Chrome extension, a Windows app, and an Android app. The instructions were rather unclear and the UI was frankly disappointing. I couldn’t sync my Android app, so I spent time diving into support articles, but found nothing. I ended up contacting support, and seeing as they weren’t answering, I GTFO-ed and unsubscribed.
By the time they replied (+48h), I had already moved on to LessPass, which turned out to be exactly what I like: simple and convenient. No vault, no data saved, no account to create, and very easy to take in hand.
And finally…
I went to watch some cool SF. Treat yourself, go feast your eyes and ears. They deserve it.
4th of October 2017
Alright, here’s the deal.
I’ve been longing to write more for a while, and now seems like an exciting time to do so.
After a year at my second experience as a Web Project Manager, I realised I dearly missed science and logical reasoning. In pursuit of some change towards my long-lost interests, I resigned at the end of August.
I found an exhaustive and lengthy Python MOOC at OpenClassrooms, which I’m currently 57% through — yes, OC provides this figure, and it is a nice uplift.
My aim here is to write weekly updates into this journey, to document it, whichever position I end up in. From Web Project Manager to… Who knows? But something more tech-y, definitely more tech-y.
I don’t know how long this will take either. ‘Some months’ is my rough estimate.
But it’s sure as hell going to be tremendously interesting.
