This year’s WeCoded celebration is the perfect opportunity for everyone to take time to celebrate all their wins no matter how small and big they are. Celebrate all the wins that you have accomplished so far this year. Accomplishments play a big part in your tech story so don't be shy about them.
It doesn’t matter if it is building an app or installing Git on your computer. Every accomplishment deserves a chance to be celebrated no matter the size. Life is a s-curve and the route looks different for everyone.
Each route will vary in how much time it takes to get to a certain destination and how many curves are along the path. This is why you need both small and big wins. Those small victories might not seem like much, but those small wins make you feel good about yourself.
They give you the confidence boost to keep going toward the life you want and the goals you want to accomplish. If people only focus on the big wins, they will lose motivation much faster and give up.
What does accomplishment look like to you?
Accomplishments mean differently for each person. Your idea of what a big and small win might be different than mine and that’s 100% ok. What does matter is that you have an idea of what it looks like for you so you can better spot them as they happen in the future.
Jane Austen demonstrates this perfectly in Pride and Prejudice. At the beginning of the novel, there is a scene at Netherfield Park where the entire house party is discussing what an accomplished lady of the time looks like. Each opinion is different from Bingley admitting how impressed he is by how accomplished women he knows are.
Darcy is much more critical and even thinks that the word is applied too much to young ladies. Then there is Bingley's sister Caroline who even outlines the qualities of an accomplished lady to the entire party. This scene shows that one word can look different for every person.
Having a clear idea of what classifies as a win is very similar to creating a goal or New Year’s resolution. It doesn’t matter how you like to make a goal. You need to create a big goal and then break that goal down into smaller goals so you can accomplish them.
As we celebrate WeCoded this year, take time to think about what you consider an accomplishment.
What does a big accomplishment mean to you? Jot down a list on a piece of paper or do what I do and put a list in your bullet journal. It can be a technical accomplishment or something not related to code at all.
Just make a list. Now that you have your list, pick one and break it down into smaller wins. For example, if your big goal is to learn how to code in Python your smaller accomplishments might look like something like this:
- Learn how to create a variable in Python
- Print “Hello World” in the console using Python
- Install Python successfully on a computer
You can take this even further by breaking these small wins even smaller. Ultimately you need two lists. One for big accomplishments and one for small ones.
There is no right or wrong accomplishment so don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Don’t compare yourself to others because their idea of an accomplishment looks very different from what your idea is. Plus comparing yourself to others is just going to make you feel worse instead of making you feel better.
The Power of Community
If you are starting in tech, the first thing you need to do is join one coding community. Developers love communities and even the developers I admire talk about how much they love them for newbies learning how to code. Communities are key to being in tech for all the support they provide.
They aren’t a place to ask what a concept is or get help when you have a problem with your code. They are there to let you know you aren’t alone on this journey. Many communities provide channels or events that are related to wins and successes.
Communities are powerful in the tech community because members are all connected by journey. Everyone understands the victories and struggles along the path. This makes it easy to support each other since it wasn’t too long ago when an experienced developer was a newbie.
If you don’t have anyone who can celebrate your wins with, go to your favorite coding community and share them there. Your community will understand the value of that win and will celebrate with you. They will give you the unconditional support you need and might not get from anyone else.
Advice for Mentors and Allies
The golden rule remains relevant today for many reasons. My advice for being a good mentor and ally to underrepresented groups is to follow the golden rule. Being a mentor and an ally doesn't mean being a critic.
Great allies and mentors always self-reflect and self-evaluate themselves to make sure they are providing the best support to the people they are helping. They get to know who they are helping and take time to learn what success means to them. Then they cheer them along when those successes come.
The absolute worst thing any mentor or ally can do is discredit any accomplishment that is being made. That is a quick way to ruin anyone’s spirit. How would you feel if someone did that to you if you were learning how to code?
A good mentor and ally does their best to treat others the way they would want to be treated if the roles were reversed. They act as the mentor they wished they had when they were a newbie. The worst allies and mentors repeat the same treatment they might have received from a previous mentor just as a chance to treat others the way they were treated in the past.
Never be this kind of mentor. Repeating bad treatment won't fix the big problem at all. Instead, you want to be better so there are more good mentors in the world than the bad. All those good mentors add up in the end to making tech better.
Tech is still not perfect and the industry still has ways to go to be better. One of the ways tech can improve starts with the mentors and allies helping these underrepresented groups. No one is expecting anyone to be perfect. Just do your best and be the cheerleader, not the critic.
Top comments (1)
good explanation