Bad Days, Learning to Code, and Gaining Control
Ever have a bad day at work? Me too. According to a study by Woohoo Inc. (yes, that’s its real name), which investigated workers across different seniority levels all over the world, a scant 8% of respondents said they have “never or almost never” had a bad day at work.
Why we have bad days
As a thought experiment, think for a moment about a bad day you’ve had recently and consider what made it bad, in broad terms. An example would be: A client was angry and yelled at me in front of my boss. Now drill down a level by asking ‘Why?’. The answer might be: We failed to deliver the project on time. Again ask ‘Why?’, getting more specific this time. Despite us putting 100% effort in, two team-mates were off ill during the final week of the project. Do this a few times until the problem is sufficiently unpacked and you feel that you’ve gotten to the root cause. Now, considering that root cause, ask yourself whether that problem was within or outside of your control.
I’d be willing to bet it was outside your control. After all, you, like most rational people, wouldn’t intentionally cause yourself problems, and certainly not day-ruiners. If it was within your control, I’m sure you would’ve dealt with it and moved swiftly on. On the contrary, when we encounter problems outside our control, we experience frustration because there’s little we can do to solve them. And, when this happens often, it can cause us to feel stressed and perhaps even burnt out.
It can happen to anyone, and it happened to me.
Finding a problem within your control
In my last job (in digital marketing), when problems outside my control began to build up, I decided to find something to focus on that was more within my control. I wanted to funnel my free time and attention into learning something new, and I wanted to be able to start on it myself so that I wouldn’t be held back by matters outside of my control. Conveniently, if you design a problem yourself, you get to decide its constraints.
I kept hearing that digital marketing was ripe for automation through scripts (just another word for small computer programs), and so I decided to learn how to code. That was in April of 2019. I quickly found that I enjoyed coding, and this was in large part because I felt in control of the problem set. An important distinction, though, is that being in control simply means that I possess the power to direct the problem-solving process, and not — critically — that I know the answer right away or easily. It means that I’m eventually able to get to the solution, and that extraneous factors aren’t holding me back. When you encounter such a delicious challenge, like that which writing code often presents, it leaves you as the only thing sitting between each problem and its solution. With no one else to blame, learning to code is immensely gratifying and rewarding.
Good days
Fast forward to January of 2020. Programming in my spare time felt so good that I decided it warranted a career switch, and so I have just started at software development bootcamp Makers Academy, where I’ll be training to become a developer full time.
Am I so naive as to believe that a career in software development is going to see me retain complete control over all of the problems I encounter at work? Of course not. But I am thankful to have discovered a discipline which, at its core, is rich with intellectual challenge and bounded problems. It encourages getting stuck into a problem and wrangling with it until one arrives at a solution. That’s why the worldwide development community produces ambitious self-learners, encourages thorough documentation (the likes of which make self-learning possible), and advocates for open-source technology.
I can’t wait for the days to come, of solving more interesting and exciting problems. On that note, here’s to many more good days ahead :tada:
