“Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” - Confucio Bullshit. No matter what you do for a living, it will have parts you like and parts you don’t. Motivation comes and goes, but all great achievements require consistency.
I’ve never thought it like that, nice idea with the side quests! I’ve been using something similar, without naming it such :)
Here are my ideas for side quests:
- Use the work time to have a useful business understanding in the domain of the company. For example, if you work on Amazon (the e-commerce part), you can aim to understand the e-commerce world. Try to sell something with together with your team.
I’m in the Agriculture and drones world, and I aimed to better understand it. I got an FAA license for commercial drone flying, and spend a whole day in the corn fields of Indiana :)
2 weeks ago, we did the same with our whole team - I let everyone try to fly our huge $30k drone, and it was a great experience!
- organize a hackathon, and experiment with a tech you want to learn. It can be a small hackathon for just your team, for a single day, doesn’t need to be something huge.
A year ago I organized an Hackathon for the R&D deprtament, and used the chance to create a react-native app. That knowledge is still useful.
- experiment with methods from books. For me it’s management books, but it can be engineering books too. Trying out suggestions, and seeing how it works out. When you have some tenure on the team,
usually you can bring to the table and your manager will let you try it out.
Sometimes I feel that the bigger the company, the more disconnected from the business itself, as you'd do only a small part of it.
But I see you have the same ideas. Find a way to bring both work and some personal interest together. If I wanted to start into the drones world, it would have zero overlap with my job and it would be a much higher effort
In my opinion, the side quest doesn't have to be with a personal interest, just with something that is potentially interesting. I was not a big fan of drones before :)
If you find places where there is an overlap - that's great. But if not, learning the inside of the industry you work at has tons of advantages. I think that even in a big company, you can get access to the business side if you want, and learn more about it.
The thing about knowledge is you never know when you'll use it. If we take the side-quests in computer games analogy further - you might collect some rare quest items you don't really what to do with. But then comes a NPC that needs one of those quest items, and you have it ready to use :)
My side quest will be to create content like reels and yt videos about my experience and what i learn from my full time job, and help others that are interested in becoming developers. Thanks for sharing this valuable advice.
Totally agree with how the situations you experience at work become the foundation for writing. It's all about learning from your experiences, and working is the best way to get them! Love the other ideas you called out too. I feel like I wouldn't get to apply a lot of the things I learn from books as much if I wasn't working full-time. It's my favorite way to try new things and grow from it.
I’ve never thought it like that, nice idea with the side quests! I’ve been using something similar, without naming it such :)
Here are my ideas for side quests:
- Use the work time to have a useful business understanding in the domain of the company. For example, if you work on Amazon (the e-commerce part), you can aim to understand the e-commerce world. Try to sell something with together with your team.
I’m in the Agriculture and drones world, and I aimed to better understand it. I got an FAA license for commercial drone flying, and spend a whole day in the corn fields of Indiana :)
2 weeks ago, we did the same with our whole team - I let everyone try to fly our huge $30k drone, and it was a great experience!
- organize a hackathon, and experiment with a tech you want to learn. It can be a small hackathon for just your team, for a single day, doesn’t need to be something huge.
A year ago I organized an Hackathon for the R&D deprtament, and used the chance to create a react-native app. That knowledge is still useful.
- experiment with methods from books. For me it’s management books, but it can be engineering books too. Trying out suggestions, and seeing how it works out. When you have some tenure on the team,
usually you can bring to the table and your manager will let you try it out.
Thanks a lot for the suggestions, Anton!
Sometimes I feel that the bigger the company, the more disconnected from the business itself, as you'd do only a small part of it.
But I see you have the same ideas. Find a way to bring both work and some personal interest together. If I wanted to start into the drones world, it would have zero overlap with my job and it would be a much higher effort
In my opinion, the side quest doesn't have to be with a personal interest, just with something that is potentially interesting. I was not a big fan of drones before :)
If you find places where there is an overlap - that's great. But if not, learning the inside of the industry you work at has tons of advantages. I think that even in a big company, you can get access to the business side if you want, and learn more about it.
The thing about knowledge is you never know when you'll use it. If we take the side-quests in computer games analogy further - you might collect some rare quest items you don't really what to do with. But then comes a NPC that needs one of those quest items, and you have it ready to use :)
Sounds good, follow anything that seems interesting and later you can make it something useful.
You reminded me of the "connecting the dots" concept of Steve jobs
My side quest will be to create content like reels and yt videos about my experience and what i learn from my full time job, and help others that are interested in becoming developers. Thanks for sharing this valuable advice.
Best of luck with it, Jesús! 🙌
I'm sure having this side quest will keep you engaged with anything new that happens at your job. Everything can be turned into a piece of content :)
Love the idea of side quests. I recently had some time to spare and chose to go slay a code review dragon. 🐉
Slay 5 in a day and you get a mighty sword! ⚔️
Keep pushing forward with passion!
That’s the spirit, @Meng Li 🙌
Love this article, Fran.
Totally agree with how the situations you experience at work become the foundation for writing. It's all about learning from your experiences, and working is the best way to get them! Love the other ideas you called out too. I feel like I wouldn't get to apply a lot of the things I learn from books as much if I wasn't working full-time. It's my favorite way to try new things and grow from it.