JJ’s Words: Job Search, Career Thoughts, Process of Learning Something New #2

Hi, Hello

Side note. I’ve decided to move the posts from Substack to Medium, so these are older issues. Originally posted 2/7/23

Each week, I’ll be doing a kind of review of the week filled with some experiences, thoughts, and sometimes interesting content I consumed(I’m still experimenting with how I structure this newsletter — what the layout is, what topics should I write about, how in-depth do I go in etc)

This was quite a busy week. It was a lot of job applications being sent, a lot of hours spent watching YouTube tutorials on coding, and more applications being sent. That’s what the week was. Attempting to learn coding, data analytics, and continuing to look for a job.

The job search has been a long, annoying process. I had to first update, rewrite, and improve anything that involves a job search. It meant updating my portfolio. Redoing the entire resume(repeatedly). Redoing my LinkedIn profile. That’s all before even looking for any job.

And this got me thinking about all kinds of things revolving around jobs, the application process, and mostly career-type jobs. This reminded me of an interview with Simon Sinek on The Diary of the CEO where he talked about some people not wanting a career or being those type of people that want to rise the corporate ladder.

This process got me wondering about the type of jobs I should and will be applying for. The whole idea of a career is something that I’ve been thinking about for a while and now with the job search, it’s been on my mind a lot more.

Looking at some of these roles, these application processes, some of the posts on LinkedIn, and I don’t know, the more I feel strongly about not going for those types of jobs(graduate-type jobs). Whenever I look at any of these jobs, I honestly can’t see myself enjoying any of them.

Am I meant to be looking forward to doing some business analyst role or some work in an office for a finance or coding job? Maybe some people genuinely enjoy it! But I can’t see myself enjoying that type of work.

Just the idea of going into a full-time graduate role in any corporate industry — finance, coding, business, consulting — sounds the worst.

I also think I feel like this because I already know what I love. I already know what my passion is. I already know what I’d want my career to be. I know what I enjoy doing and what I’m good at. The only issue with this path is money and it’s tough to break into.

It’s tough to break into sports media. It’s going to be tough to earn enough through writing and creating basketball content. It’s tough, but not impossible or unrealistic. This isn’t the same as having a dream-like wanting to make the NBA, which then I’d understand.

I already have my eye on the thing that matters to me. Every goal and every decision in my mind revolves around that. And because of this, every other option seems worse to me.

This makes the job search look towards more part-time jobs at this moment. That’s the work I’m looking at now. This all could change but right now, I need a job that simply gives me a change of scenery, out with new people, and not having to worry about work outside of work.

You will be busy outside of work in those corporate or graduate jobs. It will be long hours. There will be further training or education in a lot of those jobs. It’s more stressful. There’s a whole bunch of conversation about young people sacrificing their early years grinding for a career.

I know that, right now, I don’t want any of that. So, that’s why I think the idea of having part-time jobs or jobs that won’t bring unnecessary stress outside of work and ones that won’t take away time from basketball is the way to go.

One final thought on this is I think worrying about having a normal career or a typical corporate job to climb the ladder shouldn’t be a thing when you’re straight out of university. There’s a lot of time to go back to it. As long as you’re doing something, and having a clear goal that could turn into something then that’s good enough at this age.

Diving Into Coding, Analytics & Procrastination

The second thing that took most of my time is attempting to learn the basics of a bunch of coding stuff and data science.

There were a couple of reasons for this. The main one was with the idea of it helping me create better basketball content. A lot of my decisions come down to answering that.

How can I create better content? (Kind of stealing an idea from Mr Beast, which I’ll be writing up some thoughts on that this week)

And one of the answers to that is data visualization. It’s creating all kinds of graphs, analyzing data, and making life easier when doing so. I’ve seen so many examples from this on Twitter from a bunch of accounts that do one hell of a job at presenting basketball stats & charts in a fun way — @DSamangy, @CrumpledJumped

So, fast forward a few days, and it’s been hours of YouTube tutorials on Python, SQL, data analytics, Power BI, Tableau, data visualization

And a couple of thoughts came from that.

The first was regarding learning new subjects from the start. I’ve tried to learn coding and data science for so long now. I already knew which tutorials to watch because I’d seen the start of so many.

It’s always been watching a couple of minutes, realizing there’s so much to watch, so much to learn, and giving up. But this time, I stuck through it. I went over the basics again and again. I watched many beginners’ tutorials, which repeated the same thing until it stuck.

And now I realized that once you get past the initial barrier of that resistance, it doesn’t seem that bad. Once I fully learned the basics and the fundamentals, everything else seems easier. Now, it’s looking back at all those times that I stopped learning something because it wasn’t working out or it felt that it was too difficult, and realizing that it was stupid.

So, if there’s something that you want to attempt learning, you just got to push through the first wall until it sticks. Rewatch a different kinds of tutorials. Everyone will explain things differently. Watch 2–3 different people. What also works for me is literally making notes on everything I read. The more I type it out myself, the more it sticks.

The second thought was

MAKE A PLAN!

One of the things that I’ve realized that I cannot do is not have a plan and get overwhelmed with all the stuff that I could be doing. When there’s something that has different topics and there are multiple things to learn, it’s sometimes difficult to know where to start. So, having a clear roadmap and goals is important here.

So, that’s it for this week. Hopefully, this job search won’t be taking that long because once that’s sorted, basketball content can finally begin.

I also want to know your thoughts on the whole topic of careers. Do you have a career? Planning to have one? Or are you in a similar boat?

And finally, what are some of the things you’d want to learn or are learning right now?

Enjoy your day or hope you had a great day if you’re reading this late!