Self-Awareness & Why Working Remote Works for Me

One of the most valuable skills to possess in life is the skill of self-awareness. When I Googled “self-awareness” I came across the following definition:

“conscious knowledge of one’s own character, feelings, motives, and desires.”

In my mind, having the skill of self-awareness means knowing what you want, why you want it, and how you’re uniquely skilled to make those things happen. This includes knowing your strengths & weaknesses, the
“good” things that motivate you & the “bad” things that motivate you, what you’ve always dreamed of accomplishing & what you would absolutely dread doing all day, every day.

Here are a few things I’ve started to become aware of about myself:

• I have a lot of different skills that I can bring to the table, which also means I have a lot of different passions for the things I want to be working on or doing.
• I thrive by consistently switching up my environment. This can be switching up where I’m living, where I’m working, who I’m working on a problem with, the problems I’m working on, etc.
• One of the ways I’m motivated to work is by being around other people (i.e. coffee shops are a great work environment for me).
• I’m great at quickly and accurately understanding how different systems and processes work, and ultimately using that knowledge to my advantage.

These are just a very small subset of the things I’m learning about myself right now. So this blog post is all about highlighting some of these different things I’m learning about myself and the importance of being aware of these traits.

Jack of All Trades, Master of Many

I have a massive love-hate relationship with the saying “jack of all trades, master of none.” While I believe myself to be a great example of this saying, I hate the negative connotation it gives to people who have a wide variety of skills. Just because I have a lot of different skills to offer, does not mean I’m not a master at many of those skills.

While I do agree that you simply cannot be a master of every single skill you possess, I also believe that you can have multiple targeted areas of expertise while still maintaining a wide breadth of knowledge across different disciplines.

As I was doing research for this blog, I was trying to find an infographic which depicted the type of person that I believed myself to be. What I initially thought I was was a ‘T’ shaped person. That was until I came across the following infographic.

To elaborate, a ‘T’ shaped person is someone who has a deep understanding of a single area of expertise but has surface-level knowledge about other disciples and can apply their one expertise to those situations. For an ‘M’ shaped person, they are going to be able to apply their skills to a variety of different situations because of their breadth of knowledge, but they also have more than one area of expertise (For myself: I’m a great programmer, but I can also shoot, edit, and produce a high-quality professional video, have empathy and communicate to customers well, take professional quality headshots, manage a team, etc.)

After I found this infographic, it really solidified the thoughts I was having on this topic and I now believe myself to actually be an M shaped person. Knowing that this is the type of person has allowed me to find jobs and companies that really utilize this skill set. This is why I’ve always found startups to be the best fit for the type of work I want to do.

Why Working Remote Works for Me

I could honestly write an entire blog post about why I like working remote, but I wanted to start with a short section here first. This section combines both the second and third things I’m learning about myself, which are:

2) I thrive by consistently switching up my environment.
3) I’m motivated to get work done by being around other people.

Having the freedom, flexibility, and trust to work remote is extremely valuable to me for a variety of different reasons.

First and foremost, and the most obvious reason, if you know me I love and crave travel. Traveling is one of my favorite things to do and by working remote I’m allowed to satisfy this desire to travel while still working on meaningful work and companies I love.

More importantly though, by having the flexibility to work from different locations, I’m given the opportunity to gain a new perspective and refresh my mindset. With a clear mind and new found energy, I’m able to produce my best work possible. I’m not sure what it is about me that makes me this way, but simply by changing where I’m working I am able to gain a new found energy and excitement about the projects I’m working on.

I’ll be honest, I’ve found it hard to convey this idea and convince companies that in the end, it will lead to their benefit, so I’m still working on improving this area of my professional life. If you have any tips or tricks, please leave them in the comments below!

Another benefit for me that working remote provides really touches on the idea of “I’m motivated to work is by being around other people.” I know this isn’t the best source of motivation, but I think by working around other people I’m utilizing a certain sense of pride in myself to work harder.

Whenever I’m working around other people, especially if they are strangers, I really want them to perceive me as someone who works hard and someone who is working on really interesting things. Logically, I know that no one will actually notice or care about what I’m working on, but in my mind, they still might and I still care about being perceived in that way. I’ve found that if there are people around me while I’m working, I always stay extremely focused on the task at hand. I know it’s strange but it works for me and that’s the most important thing.

The End Goal

The last point I wanted to talk about in this blog is the point of “I’m great at quickly and accurately understanding how different systems and processes work, and ultimately using that knowledge to my advantage.”

I think I’ve known this my entire life, but recently I’ve been thinking about it a lot more. There are plenty of stories that come to mind about how I’ve done this in the past like how when I was growing up I would always take apart and reassemble my toys to better understand how they worked and what I could build with them. Or when I helped create a computer help desk at my high school, which I then used to my advantage so I could start school at 9 am every day(while still having a lunch period) instead of starting at 7 am or 8 am. Or the story that my parents tell about how they never had to teach me how to drive(or drive stick shift for that matter), I just instinctually knew how to do it. Or when I surrounded myself with great people like Dawson Botsford and saw the potential of what HackCU could ultimately be when he pitched the idea to me.

These are just a few of the stories that come to my mind about this happening throughout my life. Some of the stories are playful and others have seriously changed my life, but what they all have in common is that they speak about this skill of intuition and observation that I’ve always been extremely proud of.

I think where this skill comes from is both just naturally who I am as a person but also from something my dad instilled in me through something he would always say growing up. He would always say, normally to my brother(sorry Ian 😉 love you!), to “observe the world around you”. This saying is something that has really stuck with me throughout my life and will definitely continue to play an influential role in the future. What I love about this saying is that it highlights the fact that if you’re not paying attention to what is happening around you, then how can you be ready to jump on an opportunity when it presents itself?

The reason I bring all of this up is to talk more about where I see myself ultimately going in life and in work. I recently started managing a small team at work and it’s been absolutely amazing. I’m so thankful for the opportunity and I think the managerial aspect of my job is something I’m actually pretty great at and really enjoy. This change at work started the process of me thinking more about where I ultimately want to go professionally.

As much as I love Developer Relations, I don’t think that it’s the end goal for where I will end up in my career. It’s a great place to learn about startups and how many different aspects of tech companies work, but where I ultimately see myself going is either becoming a CEO of a company, starting my own venture or getting into tech investing. There are many different paths for how I might reach these goals, but this is the general direction for where I am headed right now. Having the ability to assess the entirety of a system(or company), and being aware of the opportunities in life, is invaluable to someone who is running a company or investing in another’s company. I don’t know exactly what is going to happen in the future, but I am so excited to keep working hard and pushing myself in new and interesting ways.

If you liked the article leave a 👏 or leave a comment down below with anything you’re learning about yourself. Also, I’m looking for more interesting writers to follow on Medium, so please comment any writers you enjoy down below!