Calm and Steady - The Joy and Overload of Starting Something New

I've been postponing this blog post for a while. Once again, I'm finding myself in the situation that I literally have to push myself to sit down and start writing with the intent to publish something in the end. To show up and let whatever comes out of it be good enough.

Interestingly, as I've picked up journaling for this year's personal challenge of #CalmAndSteady, there's nothing holding me back from taking note of what's going on in my head day by day. Yet blogging... is a bigger step after all that takes a lot more time. Even though I'm doing this for myself and my own learning in the first place. Well, I've just learned again the last month that my ramblings, musings and public reflections seem to have helped someone in my circle. I'm always super glad to hear this, it's the best bonus I could imagine! My posts definitely aren't for everyone, yet if they help anyone move a step forward on their own journey, what more could I want? 

Alright, let's get to it and look at my last month. So many things happened! It's been really good, and really overwhelming at the same time. While rationally knowing there's only so much I can do given the time and energy left to me, I still had a hard time giving myself grace. I'm still learning to keep my calm, and that steady can also mean a tiny fraction of a small step a day as long as there's movement.

 

New Job, New Role

First the obvious: I've started out at a new company, as a security engineer on their cloud security team, focusing mainly on product security. So many uncertainties and at the same time opportunities come with this! I'm super glad I took this leap, it's already been very rewarding. My new team is awesome: folks are lovely, really knowledgeable, and actively helping each other grow. The domain and product are very interesting and challenging, offering an intriguing mix of valuable legacy and modern innovation. There's plenty of opportunity to have positive impact and really grow there as well. I even have the pleasure (and pain) to dive into yet again a partially new tech stack! Granted, I really do enjoy figuring things out and comparing mental models with what I've worked with before, so that can be counted as a plus.

A new job comes with different constraints and freedoms to adapt to. Based on that, I had to shift my daily rhythm once again, which always takes time adjusting to. Also, adapting to being on-site at the office at times, which comes with all downsides and also benefits. I really forgot how much time is lost just crossing distances, though! Plus dealing with noises, too low room temperature, and so on. And yet it's lovely to see my teammates and other colleagues in person and enjoying lunch together, I really missed that. I'm glad I have a basic grasp of this company's and team's rhythm by now so I can also organize my community endeavors around it without too much of a hassle.

Learning something new can really have a toll on you. I've totally underestimated how much it would on me, it didn't feel like it while going through it. The onboarding was and still is great, the pace feels very sustainable, I enjoy learning lots of things and exploring more every day. And yet. It seems time is just running away from me. I lack energy. Especially in addition with a changed daily rhythm, changed nutrition, changed physical routine, changed room temperature, and so on - rationally, I know it's a lot of change to digest. And yet what I achieve every day next to work feels so little. Guess what, here's the giving myself grace part once more.

Best things: I was neither doubted nor frowned upon by any colleague of any role so far, not even once. Never had that before when joining a new company and team, let alone when taking on a new role! It's just beautiful to see how it can be. On top of that, I was appreciated for speaking at conferences, people highlighted it as a good thing and actively made it possible, just as agreed when taking up the offer. What a relief! And finally, I managed to already contribute hands-on - which I love, as I'm learning so much more when getting my hands on something. This also allows me to figure more things out and ask further questions I wouldn't have known to ask otherwise. The first feedback I've received based on my contributions was very promising and validating, what a relief for my anxious mind! So, after only one month, I'm rather confident already that I really do have a place in this company, team and role, that I can actually grow with them and I will have the space to do so. The last time I had this feeling so quickly was when I started out at Flixbus, where I also took quite a leap and it paid off big time.

By the way, just being on this new role, I already gained new ideas for blog posts and talks. Nothing I've followed up on yet, but more opportunities to spend time sharing more than my personal reflections will come again.

 

Everything, All at Once

Let me repeat: the last month had been quite overwhelming, and also rewarding. All at the same time. In hindsight, there seems to have been a number of coincidences all happening in the same month - February might not have been the smartest month to start my new job just because of everything else happening at this time. It's also been the month when people who made up their resolutions in January started reaching out to collaborate on new endeavors. It's been a month where folks in my circles were looking for a new job and asked for support. I've given my first mock interview this way and it seemed to have helped prepare the other person for their real interview! Definitely a big win. It's been a month when several conferences, podcasts and other events invited speakers or ran calls for papers, which kept me busy. It's also been the month when we fully picked up organizing our own conference again, the Open Security Conference, onboarding lots of new folks to the team (yay!). It's been a month when several private appointments with family and friends took place. It's still been volleyball season with games to be played. And of course, thanks to my changed situation, folks reached out to inquire about my new job, to pick up usual catch-up calls, and also continue shared endeavors.

Well, all this happened within just a few weeks while I was trying to settle at my new company, figure out whether my vacation plans would still work out and if conferences I planned to submit to would be feasible at all, how my new schedule and rhythm is like so I can plan other endeavors around it. 

Oh, and do I have to mention the state of the world? Global and local just as well. Considering there was a very important election going on in my country and the outcome was exactly what I feared it to be - it's been indeed everything all at once in February. Well, after the election is before the election, and every day counts towards working toward a better future, and there are manifold ways to contribute to it.

Looking back, it's no wonder I felt slightly (haha) overwhelmed and lacking energy. The month of March will stay quite busy as well, yet better as a few things could have been clarified already. Afterwards, I plan to keep space for myself to just enjoy the ride and not add much of anything else to my list this year. Instead, I hope to rather reduce things where I can and introduce more slack in my private time. Let's see how long I can keep this up.

 

Calm and steady enough? 

Depending on how you look at it, my personal challenge for the year is either going super slowly and by far not as steady as I wished for; or alternatively, it's going super well as I've been continuously tested to stay calm and confident throughout the month while not feeling at my best capacity or basically having time for anything. Rationally, I realize I did spend lots of time on lots of things, just different ones than I set out to do.

This month, I didn't pick up any new topics. Despite not having much time, I did make some progress on the following ones.

• Continue reading "Threats: What Every Engineer Should Learn From Star Wars" by Adam Shostack. I'm really slow in reading. And yet this book is still worth it, showcasing different ways how threats can manifest.
• Adding to my flashcards here and there as I came across concepts to take note of. Didn't practice on them, yet extended them as I go and that was good enough for me this month.
• Finally founded a small CTF team! It's actually happening, we just had our kickoff call and our first CTF participation is already scheduled. Literally can't wait for learning together on this.
• A bit of Hack the Box challenges for myself. Not much, and yet I'm always learning so much when working on them. Even when having to look up things in walkthroughs, the eureka moments are strong here.
• A few C# exercises on Exercism. As I started at my new company and am learning a lot about C# and .NET framework there, I decided not to pursue these exercises further in my free time as of now. Coding exercises are sometimes nice to have, you can limit your thinking to a certain space and can just do a small thing. That being said, I tend to learn more on something that contributes value to a higher goal besides merely finishing an exercise. (I do notice I don't apply the same logic to the Hack the Box challenges, curiously.)
• I completed the other Semgrep Academy courses I wanted to do. So that one's now ticked off my list! Feels good to finish something.

I've experimented with a few approaches to my challenge, mainly how much energy and time to invest in what, and in what order to prioritize things during my day. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. In the end, only the current day and moment can tell me where my energies are flowing and what I'm currently able to invest. Sometimes I have to build up energy by doing seemingly unrelated, or even potentially wasteful things before I'm up for the actual thing. And that's okay as well. It's about giving myself grace and stay calm. (Yeah, I have to repeat this over and over for myself.)

That applies to my joy topics as well. Turns out, I fail investing in them daily. Not that there's no joy at all, I've integrated enjoyable stuff into my days quite well already (like sipping on luxurious tea, or listening to audiobooks). Yet additional pure joy topics (like playing computer games) need more time, headspace, and energy for me. I've done a lot better investing in these things during the weekend. Weekly "pure joy for myself" topics seem to work for me, while my learning topics can indeed be tiny daily steps to make progress.

My needs had been covered quite well-ish during this month. A bit more sleep, a bit more exercise, a bit more warmth would have been good. The next months to come can offer more of that. Journaling still works out super well for me, I'm gaining lots of benefit without it costing me much time.

I've came across thought-provoking inspiration from community folks this month that felt so relevant to my endeavor that I want to leave these peices here for my future self.

• Alan Page shared a very resonating piece in one of his recent newsletters: “So, I’m reminding myself of something as I sit in my favorite local coffee shop: It’s okay to write even when it feels hard. It’s ok to write, even if the subject isn’t riveting or compelling. It’s okay to create, even when it comes in fits and starts. It’s okay to show up imperfectly, with half-formed thoughts, as long as we keep showing up.” This really reminded me of working on showing up. Even if I don’t feel like it on that day. When I did show up on bad days it worked super well for me in the past, I know it can work. Yet it's the same thing what’s been holding me back, or rather how I’ve been holding myself back many times, on so many things I set out to do: not showing up for myself. What a profound reminder.
• I came across a post on Mastodon that included this quote: "Anything worth doing is worth doing badly." Of course, context is crucial for such statements. It does present a perfect reminder to myself for my challenge though: Anything done is better than nothing done. Poorly done is better than nothing done.
• Mark Techson shared this piece of gold: “Need to figure out what I have to let go of to make room for what I want 🤝🏾” So much this... I'm not there yet. Yet.
• On a related note, Amy Edmondson asked this amazing reflection question: “How can I let go of the things that are keeping me stuck?” Phew, hitting the nail on the head. 
• Just a few days ago I told someone else to give themselves grace, that time and energy comes in waves, and tides will rise again. Yeah. The actual target audience was me, myself and I.
  

I did gain confidence through working hands-on on actual tasks, and getting feedback through both the personal realization that I've figured things out as well as external validation from other folks appreciating my work. In addition, I did gain confidence and showed up stronger in other areas of life (like volleyball) as well which is such a nice payoff for my personal challenge.

So overall, steady-ish and calm-ish it was the last weeks. And that's okay for some time as well. I've still did some things, some theory and some practice, some solo and some social stuff. I've done plenty of learning at work, naturally. Doesn't count towards my challenge, and still. I've realized a bunch of times that I've actually gained confidence, and that definitely counts for something. The best: my inner critic had been pleasantly calm this whole month, and rightfully so. That's a huge win, considering all the things that happened. And in hindsight I did better at giving myself grace even though it didn't feel like it.

Yes, there's more that I could do for things I want to do. Yes, there's less I could do for things that don't help me forward. Yes, I could say yes less often to make space for myself and better opportunities to come. It's a learning journey after all. And yes, I'm still excited about this specific personal journey in 2025.

Calm and Steady - Off to a Good Start

The blog post to make a new personal challenge public is usually the most exciting to write. The first post afterwards to share progress is usually the most difficult. Once that initial one is out of the way, I often have a better hunch on what I want to share in what way, whether I use a template for structure or not, how refined the post should be, and so on.

That's exactly why I literally just sat down to type whatever comes into my head at that moment in time. And I intended to share it, as rough and raw as I could allow it to be. I did go over it once more, yet kept in mind that there's more value in sharing early than in over-polishing.

The first month of my new "Calm and Steady" personal challenge is coming to an end. Here's what I've done so far, what worked and what didn't, and the insights I gained.

 

Journaling Using a Template for the Win

I knew I would need some way to track what I'm doing so I can look back and decide on potential course corrections. Additionally, I am well aware that I think in writing - so I like to write to think. Putting words down in writing often help me realize things better than any other way. That's why I set out to start journaling not only for work, but also for personal endeavors like this. 

I've made a conscious choice not to get lost in tooling paralysis but pick the first tool that could possibly work. I needed something that allowed me to get started quickly without hassle yet won't block future migrations. For this case, I tried Notion. It never really matched my needs before, yet using it for a month now I can say it was totally worth making this call. Fast, easy, synced, editable everywhere, not too constrained, and I can just export my notes in markdown and move somewhere else whenever I want to.

Next, I created a template for my daily journal page. I've iterated over this a few times now and just adapted it to what I needed. Having a few sections available meant I could focus my time on the actual content and still check boxes I wanted to evaluate later on. I also made a deliberate choice to have only few free text sections and the rest quickly interactive checkboxes and buttons to save time and lower the burden to do this daily. Here are my current template sections:

• Thoughts: anything noteworthy I want to record or reflect on.
  
• Practice or Theory: what small step I took today to make steady progress.
  
• Joy just for the Sake of Joy: whatever I did just for myself, where joy was the self-purpose.
• Needs Covered: which of my daily or less regular needs I've satisfied today.
  
• Voice of My Inner Critic: how calm or loud my inner critic got and why.
  
• Mood of the Day: how I've perceived the day overall.
  
• Sunday Joy Check: whether what I'm doing still brings me joy or I should change anything.
  

Turns out, this worked surprisingly well for me! It's been giving my thoughts both structure and freedom. I have a daily reminder to fill it, and I actually did so every day. Nice.

 

Enough Options, not too Many

Based on initial ideation, I chose to start the following topics which provide a mix of theory and practice, solo and social time.

• Read "Threats: What Every Engineer Should Learn From Star Wars" by Adam Shostack. I have a pile of potentially awesome books on my reading list, and I know it takes me long time to go through any of them. This is the book on the top of my pile, so I finally started it. Didn't make much progress yet, but it's been insightful already.
  
• Write my own flashcards with concepts I come across. Doing so, I followed my original idea to cater to my brain's needs. I started an Anki deck to which I added any terms and concepts I encountered during my daily work on topics. It still grows organically. I wondered when to start learning using these cards in a regular manner to memorize the concepts. I tried the mechanism once as a proof of concept which was already helpful. I think I'll continue building the deck a bit further before I introduce a regular routine.
  
• Explore the Exercism C# track. I like the platform's way of introducing language concepts and allowing you to practice in steps, as well as see other folks' solutions and improve yours iteratively. My upcoming role has a focus on the .NET platform with which I haven't had many touch points yet, and I'm curious about concepts and conventions in C#. 
  
• Solve Hack the Box labs. I just love these security puzzles to practice. I'm still a newbie and there's much to learn, so this involves going through frustration until you either have the eureka moment or the humbleness to look things up and learn by following walkthroughs. Yet any little step equips you better for the next, and it's just fun. Also, it's a great one to do socially together and I'm glad I had great company during this month.
  
• Found a CTF team. It's been on my list for 1.5 years, and guess what? It's now happening indeed! I have a small group of folks who are still interested to join me in this experiment. Once I have a hunch on my work schedule rhythm, I'll organize first informal practice sessions and we'll see where it leads us.
  
• Do Semgrep Academy courses. Back when Tanya Janca offered her We Hack Purple courses, I've already enjoyed the AppSec Level Foundation 1 course. Now it was time to complete level 2 and 3 as well. They were validating of what I already know, filling gaps of what I didn't know yet, and they equipped me with tangible advice for real work situations. Hence, I decided to continue with the other free courses offered, like on secure coding.
  

Turns out, the variety of topics helps me go with my energies each day. At the same time, I've also realized I've reached the limit of topics in focus at the same time. I hope to finish some the next month to maintain flexibility to change my way based on new learnings. 

Same applies to my "joy for the sake of joy" bucket. I draw from a good variety of things I love doing as I go, depending on whatever I'm up to at any given day.

Spotting Behavioral Patterns

In the beginning, I've been quite diligent with keeping my joy topics going every day. I did notice how much I limited time for these things, though, or that I usually put them at the end of the day after everything else was done (business before pleasure and such). In the last weeks, I've once again started to neglect them completely, prioritizing everything else. The things I do for this challenge still bring me joy, yet that's a known pattern that I need to be very cautious about and take deliberate action against.

On a positive note, I've been way better in keeping my needs satisfied. Not super great, but way better than last year. Having my needs as part of my journaling template really helps me not to lose sight of them.

I've identified a detractor I didn't expect: social media. It probably sounds like an obvious one to many, yet I've been rather constrained about it most of the times. That being said, the last months my social media time got really out of hand. I'm spread across too many platforms and formats these days, I didn't filter content enough, and I didn't prioritize my time for the most valuable places. I've started experimenting with a few course corrections in order to get back to a sustainable pace and still get the value out of social media without getting drawn in. Healthy boundaries and such.

Once more, I've realized that I need to tackle smaller tasks and quick wins first to free up headspace and gain momentum to manage bigger ones. Not to feel paralyzing overwhelm and staying in a state of anxiousness, but instead taking action to re-gain a state of calmness.

Going Steady, but Keeping Calm?

Looking back, my inner critic was doing quite a great job this month. The inner voices mostly kept calm and rightfully so. Only rarely they flagged something, mostly valid concerns. It's been a good, restful and rather calm month in general, which made it easier. Yet practicing while being in good shape can help prepare a lot for wilder times. 

I've also learned a few things based on the concerns my inner critic alerted me on.

An alert might feel overwhelming at first, loud and noisy. It might seem unhelpful in the moment. I might only learn if it was valid or not in hindsight. And still there might be something important going on, something to learn from. This happened to me during a volleyball game I had this month (yes, the inner critic also applies to other areas in life). I made the decision to take myself out of the game, hoping to give us a winning chance - my critic was loud in that moment in all possible ways. A week later my coach gave me invaluable feedback that my decision had indeed been a good one for the team and how it showed maturity. In hindsight, my critic was letting me do the right thing yet I wouldn't have needed to doubt my decision.

Whenever I just rush do things quickly and get them out of the way, I fall back to automated thinking and approaches I’ve used most times before. Yet those don't work well when I'm confronted with a new domain or challenge I don't solve every day. Which means, rushing when trying to navigate less experienced terrain makes my critic go loud. To find good solutions (that don’t need to take long either), I need to take some time and calm space, really look at the problem at hand, and think about how to approach it. That’s the frame in which I can make use of other knowledge and pieces of the puzzle I already have that aren't automated yet. Therefore, a reminder to myself: use system 2 to think slowly about problems and you have all your tools available to solve them.

Picking up puzzle pieces as I go sometimes feels really slow (hello, critic!). And yet it proved to be an invaluable approach for me during my whole career. This month, I've learned once again that gathering pieces together with others can turn out to become really valuable for them as well. It's worth it and we all get better as we go. I need to stay patient.

In conclusion, all this helps me see my inner critic in another light. I already knew I could learn from it rationally, and now I have further evidence including the emotional experience. That insight alone was already worth starting this whole challenge. I hope to turn it into further calmness. Also, I'm curious how things will play out the next month when I'm starting at a new company, in a new role. Stay tuned!

Calm and Steady as She Goes

Personal challenges serve me well as my themes to focus on in a year and grow with them. It's that time of the year again to reveal what I'm setting out to do in 2025!

As it turned out in the past years, my brain already starts thinking about the next year's big challenging scary endeavor before finishing up the current one. To enable myself to keep going and completing that first, I'm taking notes for next year whenever any thought pops up. And as usual, I share these raw notes for my future self, mostly unedited. Here are those I took during 2024.

Consider security certificate as next year challenge (as I want to start speaking at security conferences, and grow into security related jobs, or just be taken seriously, or just prove it to myself)

Just reading books - catching up on all

Start a capture the flag (CTF) team, finally

Maybe just continue new contributions anyway - at least 3 of them will continue overlapping into 2025

Definitely include fun activities and self-care, like games, books, volleyball and fitness, just rest, and more - was way too few this year

Focus on the fun in learning (while continuing ongoing 2024 endeavors)

• fun: gamify things (participate in 1 CTF)
• frequent: deliberate regular practice as a habit (including CTF teams, solo puzzles, programming exercises, etc.)
• foundations: learn theory for conceptual foundations, e.g. using flashcards, for “prove and show yourself” situations, potential interviews, and certifications (do 1 security related certificate to validate yourself and increase your market value)

Theory and practice: a flag a week, a cert a year - security first, development second

Journal

Fun, practice, theory - integrated in everyday, leaving space, in this priority

Focus on new job

Practice and theory, emphasis on fun. Security and development. Only constraint: 15min on anything every day, computer games every week.

Have two buckets, do one of each every day - depending on energy that day:

• security or development, play or theory (CTF, book, flashcards, kata, build, ...), alone or with others
• joy for self-purpose and care: play (not casual), draw / paint, read fiction

Make use of what works even on bad days: habits and streaks

Be mindful of other tasks and commitments: conference speaking, work, open security conference (osco), leadership workshops, card deck game, accountability partnership

Build in system so I can't automatically fall back on the exact same easiest thing every day

Blog every week what I learned, allow myself to post in bullet points only to still learn in public and share insights, also for my future self

Idea from Tobias Geyer for keeping myself accountable regarding self-care: accountability buddy :)

You'll notice duplicates and different formulations of roughly similar ideas. I usually just add notes as I go on purpose so I see how my thinking evolved over time. Also, some ideas I've listed in 2024 had been overhauled and outdated by reality in the meantime. For example, I don't need to prepare for my entry in a security role and related interviews any longer, I already had to do them without said prep - and I made it! I'm still so grateful. Certificates would still be useful of course for market value and some seem to be actually useful regarding their content. Maybe something to head for the year after.

That aside, looking at my notes, can you see the red thread showing up for 2025 already? The things that repeated in my head over and over? I see it and yet I need to write it down and formulate it out. Why? It helps me get down to the core challenge, forces me to structure those thoughts into a clear hypothesis and allows me to check in with myself from time to time to see how I'm doing and hence keeping myself accountable. This way I can also make it public, which again holds me accountable in a different way. And another one is to have a learning partner to check in with from time to time (thanks for being there, Toyer Mamoojee!). Or maybe multiple, e.g. one per topic or realm, and why not? Whatever works. I'll figure out what will work for me this year.

 

The Challenge

What is the actual challenge for me this year? Well, this one needs some background and explanation.

I got challenged throughout my career, even life, regarding what I'm doing, what I'm not doing, or not doing enough of it, or not be enough, or be too much, and whatever. Be it the evergreen "you're not technical (enough)" while certain people will keep moving the respective goalpost just for the sake of gatekeeping and keeping me busy and preoccupied with trying to reach an unreachable goal, no matter how often I've proven I am indeed technical. And where I'm not yet, I'm capable of becoming more technical. It doesn't stop with this classic, though. I've also heard "you're not your job" a lot of times. While in general I agree, this one stings just as well, given how much I enjoy tech and work on a variety of tech-related things in my non-work time. My identity is manifold and at the same time parts of it are indeed deeply rooted in my job. I'm fine with it. I'm super privileged to love what I do for a living and gain a lot from it for the other parts of my life. 

There are more challenges like these two examples. I've actively invested in unlearning my people pleasing tendencies for some time now. It's hard. On bad days, I fall back to old behavior patterns. On some days, I get past them without feeling overly selfish. And yet they come back to me time and time again. My inner critic is very trained on getting loud whenever I might disappoint people and their expectations to me. No matter how conflicting they might be (hence setting me up for failure), or whether I concur at all in the first place. I don't want this inner fight anymore that costs so much energy and focus when it's not needed (there are valid topics where the inner critic is a very useful mechanism, it doesn't exist without a purpose).

I want to set out to calm these inner voices that are especially strong in moments when I feel dumb, that I'm not knowing my own craft well enough, or that I'm not being allowed to enjoy my craft no matter my current abilities. I've once again had quite a few of these moments in 2024, like during a code retreat at a conference, in a work situation with a former teammate, and more. They sting, they hurt more than they should, and I take them to heart way more than is helpful. They linger in my head and take up way more space than they deserve instead of me just acknowledging that this happened and moving on. Instead of just building on the countless positive indicators that I am going my way the way I do and it's fine like it is.

One particular case when my inner critic gets too loud is the following. Whenever other people use specific terminology related to what they're doing, e.g. techniques, patterns, strategies, you name it - my brain struggles to remember what it was about. That doesn't happen for things I've been most used to as I've had plenty of opportunity to practice over the years, let's say "exploratory testing". But if someone says "dependency injection" I'm beating myself up for not instantly being able to provide its exact definition even though I've also had plenty of touch points and made use of this concept over and over myself. And that's what's nagging me: my inner critic shouting "I'm blanking out, but I should know, I should be able to explain!" and certain outer critics pointing out "see, I told you you're not technical". While at the same time knowing that first, there are lots of folks who don't judge me for it. Second, I've just not had the same opportunity to learn and practice certain concepts compared to others who focused on it. And third, my brain and body need a lot of repetition to memorize anything, I've learned that already in my childhood. So now I could do lots of different things; I could keep whining about it, I could stop bothering, or I could give myself more opportunities based on my specific needs and calm those voices. For 2025, I'm choosing the latter.

A dear community friend told me that haters gonna hate - whoever wants to put me in any corner will do so. No matter what I do. I can only control what's in my realm, which is my own inner critic demanding to prove myself to myself and others. Therefore, I need to focus on myself.

That is exactly what makes this challenge scary for me. It's about facing my inner demons and taking action instead of just letting them roam around. It's about focusing on me and not on what the rest of the world tells me or I assume they would tell me. It's working on myself. My last challenge of 2024 was very outward facing, contributing to community. This one is contributing to myself.

One more thought. Going back to my previous challenges, a whole lot of them are about gaining confidence. To speak on stages. To go deeper into coding. I also have a whole talk on gaining technical confidence. See a pattern? Even after 15 years in tech I'm still seeking for that inner and outer peace of a calm mind. This year it's on. On my own terms, in my own ways, I'll find a way to become calm enough. Never jump to perfection, right? Just continuously do steps to become better. And calmer.

My Needs

This year, I took additional time to reflect on my new challenge, goal setting, and especially my own needs. Here are a few things that really helped me gain further clarity.

• Cosima Laube shared a great technique, the "W.I.N. manual" (W.I.N. = What I Need). She asks to note down our answers to a few questions. The core one is "What do I need to do well, enabling me to be the best version of myself?" Daily, weekly, monthly, a few times a year? And lastly, what are things that are not helpful at all, that drain my energy? This exercise doesn't take long, doesn't have to be overly comprehensive, and yet reveals a lot of insights. For me my needs are focused around taking care of my body and brain, managing my cognitive load, giving myself calm space and time where I can think, taking continuous tiny steps. Allowing the pieces of the puzzle that I pick up as I go form a picture over time. Giving myself joyful and playful moments. My energy drainers and detractors revolve around pressure: due dates, social expectations (or my interpretation of them), allowing myself to be pulled in other directions, my ambition setting myself up for failure and getting angry at myself for it, my brain trying to puzzle out incompatible input and getting stuck, my body alerting me on neglected needs or even forcing me to stop.
• This reflection made me remember an exercise I had done already in 2023, thanks to a dear former teammate who worked on making our company's work environment more accessible. She introduced the idea of creating an "inclusivity passport" to gain clarity on our own needs and offer a way to communicate those of them that we want to share with our colleagues. It asked us to think through our needs when it comes to touch, vision, hearing, speech, cognition, and anything else. It was immensely helpful for me and I gained further insights about myself. For example, I found myself listing most of my own needs in the cognition category. Here are some excerpts, that are especially relevant for my personal challenge: "I need time to think without too tight constraints. I can only focus on one thing at a time. If my cognitive load gets too high, I literally won't be able to think at all anymore, everything slows down to a halt. I can get very anxious, hence I'm trying to keep myself in a calm place as much as possible - that's where I do my best work and in general am the best human I can be. Hands-on repetition helps me learn new things."
• I have a magnet board at home. Over the years, I just added to it, leaving whatever was there before. A few days ago, I decided to redo it, and look what I came across as reminders from my past self: "Calm is a choice". "Sometimes we need to stop to be able to think". "Energy is limited". Yep, so very fitting. 
• Last week, I happened to listen to a podcast with Brook Schoenfield where he dropped a few gems which resonated heavily with me. Let me incompletely paraphrase some core points here: "Keep listening. Just because you don't know what's going on doesn't mean your brain won't get enough of the background over time to begin to reveal the form. Don't be in a rush, let it happen, it takes a while (unless you're naturally predisposed). For us mere mortals we gotta wait and do the time, eventually it takes form."
• Mark Techson posted a video on how to nail the goals you set yourself. He asked three questions. First, what was holding you back in the past from getting this done? Well, for me it was often no action just talking, plus investing time in other things that drained my energy and capacity - basically not keeping space for this and especially my own needs. Second, what do I stand to gain if I actually hit this goal? What's in it for me? My response was peace of mind, calmness, the "I got this" feeling, confidence. But also less worry, less anxiety etc. over things that are not worth it. Gaining back control over my own mind and the things I have in my own hands. Finally, what do I stand to lose? Phew. My self-belief, confidence and trust in myself. Hence, all the things I could do and have impact on where I need exactly that. Control over my life as I allow other people to dictate it.
  

Listing all these needs and thoughts and seeing them right in front of me, I realized that these are all things that I have in my own hand. Phew... I can literally gain back control and choose to be calm and slow and steady. Or whatever else is helpful in the moment.

Last year's challenge was very fruitful and yet turned out to be very stressful as well. This year, knowing there will also be a lot going on in life in general, I want to take it slower. Because that's what my brain and body really need. As ambitious as I am, I want to start taking things in ways I can take them best. Slowly, steadily it is.

The Hypothesis

I believe that learning in ways that fit my own personal needs, every day for just a bit, combining theory and practice, will soothe my inner critic, and allow myself to focus on the joy of (re)discovering knowledge and skills while holding space for whatever else I want to use my time for during the year. 

I've proven the hypothesis when my inner critic focuses on their original task again to alert me on actual concerns, and I've had a good time with what I learned and worked on.

The Experiment

I like to keep my hypotheses on a higher level, rather overarching and generic while crisp enough, yet I also yearn for concrete details that will guide me on my first steps and also help with evaluating the hypothesis in the end to prove or disprove it. Here's the tangible experiment I have in mind to test the above hypothesis.

• The learning topics pay into application or cloud security in some way. Narrowing things down a bit should provide focus while still being broad enough to provide plenty of flexibility to see where my energy is going.
• It's completely up to me whether I go for theory or practice on any day, as long as both parts are represented every week.
• For theory, I'm going for systems that helped my brain learn back in formal education - like using flashcards to memorize terms and definitions. I acknowledge that I need repetition first before I grow understanding.
• For practice, there are lots of options to choose from, like capture the flag challenges, developing a practice project, contributing to open source, building tools for myself, and so on. These can be very temporary throw-away projects or things that have long-term value. Anything counts as long as I apply my knowledge and practice deliberately.
• To support my brain, I build a habit of doing something every day. Can be as tiny as a 1-minute effort or as big as spending hours. Just something to do and focus on. It doesn't have to bring me further and I don't have to make any perceivable progress of sorts.
• Every week, I check in with myself if what I'm doing brings me joy. As simple as that. If yes, great keep going, if not, I change one thing and then see the following week whether this improved the situation or I keep experimenting.
• I take note of moments when my inner critic gets loud again on things where there's no need. I just take note, there's no need for further reflection (it'll happen anyways without myself forcing it in). I just acknowledge this happened.

To capture the last two, and maybe also my basic needs, I'll probably start journaling again. I might or might not blog about what I learn as well. I think in writing, so stuff like that really helps me. I'll figure out what works, I can make up my mind any time during the year.

The Timeline

I'm officially starting my challenge right after publishing this post. I keep it running for at least 4 weeks. I'm stopping latest at the end of October 2025. This time it's a hard stop wherever I will be at that moment in time, there's no prolongation. I might stop any time beforehand whenever I see it's not helpful, or causing me a miserable time.

This year, I've tried a few things out already before posting this. See what might work, set up a basic structure to start with. Weighing a few things in my mind, see how it feels. Not overdoing anything, as whatever I come up with should also fit in a very busy day. Experimenting a bit upfront just helped me formulate this challenge.

 

The Hashtag

Why is a hashtag or tag line important to me? This is how I refer to my challenge in my own mind. It's also how I describe it to others, so it helps to make it descriptive, crisp, and concise. It took me a while to figure out a good one for this challenge yet it was crucial to gain further clarity of its core. Sometimes it's about trusting the process and believing I'll get there. 

After trying out lots of different variations, I settled on #CalmAndSteady. That's the phrase my mind kept coming back to. It already sticks. I can just as well let it stick. Yes, I'll be learning stuff as I go. Yet the core is all about me and how I approach things and how I respond to things. It's about which system and space I create for myself, catering to my own needs and caring for myself. Calm is about grounding myself, finding that inner peace and quiet, freeing myself from anger and anxiety where possible. Calm my inner worries and give me back the time and energy to focus on what's important to me. Calm that critic. Steady is about keep on keeping on, taking tiny step by step. Not overdoing, not jumping to perfection, just consistently keeping at it. Progress and growth will follow.

I wanted to formulate things positively, so "calm and steady" works. It also works for other parts in life. For example, I really want to get healthier again while my body reminds me of my age every day. I need to take it a lot slower than many years back, and not rush at all; otherwise, I'll have to pay a price and be even more patient with myself again. So yes, this year is a "work on myself" year. Calm and steady includes that patience that I'll need with myself to wait until pieces come together and fall into their places. It also includes that peaceful inner state of mind that keeps me enabled to act, no matter what else might come on the outside. I'd very much like that. Especially given the state of the world.

Anything else?

Oh, there will be plenty of "elses" throughout the year! Lots of things will happen. Life itself, a new job, a new role, conference speaking, sports, games, books, travel, friends, family, the world, whatnot. 

This challenge is intended to fit neatly into life and still be helpful. Let's see how it goes. Off I go!