Last night I went to a Girl Geek Dinner and there were some really inspiring presenters. One of them talked about personal challenges and how important it is to make sure that we are constantly setting them for ourselves. I realised that it’s something that I probably don’t do enough of. I have made a decision to go back and study part time, which I think qualifies as a challenge!
When was the last time you challenged yourself?
Oh, constantly and with great obnoxious frequency. Current projects are finishing up a BS in IT (While working full time, raising some kids, starting a home business, and nurturing along a couple of music/band projects). Also trying to get my PHP chops up to speed (Treehouse has been good for little incremental objectives with computer stuff).
Don’t you think that life is challenge enough?
I’m challenged every day in my work (users want everything for yesterday), with the clients whenever I have them (they always want more for less and for yesterday)
But I always challenge myself to be better at work and try to improve my skills. Kind of hard because my biggest challenge is organization. I always try to leave time for the unexpected and plan my time accordingly but I’m crap at it (both calculating the time I need to do anything and leaving time for those unforseen problems)
So my challenge is… knowing myself better and plan accordingly
After many years I have set a challenge for myself to learn how to program Windows using C++ and the Windows API. I dabbled in it back in 2000 - 2001 on a copy of Visual Studio 6. Now Microsoft gives away for free an Express version of Visual Studio that can be used to do most of the things the expensive paid version can do. The trouble now is finding good quality information to learn how to do it at more than a beginner level. Commercially-available books cover the beginner stuff pretty well but good information on the advanced things is tough to come by.
If you aren’t growing, you are dying.
Blasphemy! Have you checked out Learnable?
To be fair, you’re dying either way, but that’s what makes it fun.