Today’s post won’t be about code, data or any other type of cool things I do. Today’s post will be about learning yourself and understanding how important it is. Self-awareness is the fucking key to everything, but it is not something you just learn in one day. And it is not something I came up with – Gary Vaynerchuk talks a lot about this. And when you really start to realize that it creates such a huge shift of perspective.
I thought I knew myself and I guess there are a lot of people making the same error. There is no “I think I know” or “I guess I do” – it is or 100% yes, or no. If you have doubts for at least 1% – the answer is – you don’t know a shit.
It’s binary.
Gary Vaynerchuk
A good starting point is to understand what do you suck at and stop wasting time on things you’re just not good at. I thought I was good at everything. What a dumb dude! I suck at a lot of things: small talk – why do you need it? just say hi and talk business, why the fuck would you ask how am I doing when you don’t care and just performing formalities? I don’t understand that, but this is kind of built-in of society, so I just suck at this.
Formalities by the way – no idea about all those protocols, what you should do, what you shouldn’t – no clue at all. I’ve learnt to eat with a knife and fork in my early 20th only.
Talking a lot – I just can’t do that, I prefer to avoid unnecessary details or descriptions and just say what I want to say without wasting time of other person. I will never become a romance writer 😀
Flirting and all these sexual games – here I suck the most. Spot a hint from a girl – mission impossible. Understand that she likes me – the fucking same. I always treat a girl like a beautiful friend and not like a piece of meat to fuck, but… that leads to friendzone, we all know that.
I suck at expression my emotions verbally – I just don’t know how to name my emotions 😀
I can’t read between lines – some philosophic songs with hidden messages will never reach my head, that’s why I love melodic death metal – there are just scrim and awesome heavy melody, and if some song has those hidden messages – I will just enjoy the melody. The same applies to people. I don’t understand hints 😀
I don’t take things too seriously – there is always a way to laugh in my life, even if I am pissed as fuck.
Ou, and by the way, I suck at software development – I can write some simple program, but to build something huge, optimized, documented and all this stuff attached to a good project – no. Documentation is the worst. The most boring thing about my work. Give me terabytes of data and I will make magic happen in front of your eyes, but to document it will be my nightmare 😀
I am very good at problem solving, doesn’t matter what type of the problem – I won’t stop until it solved. And this I really love. That is why I love my job – my boss comes and says: “Ok, we have this kind of problem and it would be better if this worked like that” – I will never say it is impossible, I will say “let me take a look at this” and then if my knowledge allows me to solve this – I will; if I have no clue – I would just say: “I think this person will do that better”.
And I will never forget when I realized that data is really my thing. We were building our anti-fraud system the other day and after one of the tests my colleague told me: “ok, this is not correct” when I was pretty sure that system works correctly. So I took those results, imported into db (database – professional slang, after reread, decided to leave it as is) to take a look at them and in less then 1 second I knew what was wrong and where. That was a moment of enlightenment, that moment I realized that I am damn data professional.
I am also good at mobile photography, at organizing myself, at hustling, at saving money (ooou that jew inside of me helps a lot), I am not from a rich family, I lack entitlement, I am kind as hell (some would say this is a weakness, but I believe karma is a real thing and if someone used my kindness in a wrong way I don’t care, I don’t expect anything in return), I am extremely patient, I can wait and wait if result requires that.
I haven’t try a lot of things yet, but definitely these lists will expand. Actually writing this down helped me a lot. When you put your insecurities into words it helps organizing your thoughts and creates first signs of order in your head. Please, my reader, if you reached that far, I encourage you to do the same, not necessarily publishing it (but this option is much better), just put all those unproductive thoughts into words, understand who you are, accept the things you suck at and execute on things you are good at. This is like throwing garbage away, you suddenly find a lot of free space in your head that should be filled with something useful and enjoy those things that left even more.