My Personal Inventory. In other words, what am I good at, and what do I enjoy?

Whilst there is panic buying of all sorts, and things are all over the place…..

I have decided to take a step back, and answer the questions, “what am I good at, what do I enjoy, and how can I improve ‘me’?”

This is not going to be a ‘look at me’ blog post, because that’s not really me. I consider myself very lucky to ‘do what I do’, but also believe that the occasional review, does no harm.

If I was to describe the top five six things I am good at, which I enjoy, what would they be?

  1. Writing software.
  2. Debugging and fixing.
  3. Automation.
  4. Training.
  5. Pre-sales.
  6. Mentoring.

These are the six.

I’ve had the pleasure of doing some hands-on technical training recently.

It made me realise how much satisfaction I get, when people “get something”. It makes me re-assess my understanding of a subject, which re-enforces my own knowledge.

Hands on practical coding, fixing bugs, and repeatable automation are the top three. These are the things I thoroughly enjoy.

Understanding the system, and the infrastructure which underpins it, giving my the opportunity to fix, and improve both.

What does the customer want? What do they find useful? What do they want to change? I’ve used the term pre-sales.

Finally mentoring. This is a two way street. I get the opportunity to pick up a situation (in the same way as you pick up a ball), and learn about different perspective, views, and approaches.

These add clarity, and substance to the previous five.

How do I improve ‘me’

I don’t think it’s about making huge changes, more realistically, small changes over a period of time. Learning new technology is important, but other areas are just as important.

These include debugging, triage, and fixing (often subtle) system issues. This directly feeds into the other five areas, allowing improvments to be applied steadily.