The most important skill in tech
Intro
Table of Contents
Whether you're are a new graduate trying to figure out how to get a leg up in your career, or you're a mid-career professional looking to secure your next promotion, you might be wondering what are the most important skills you need to help you get where you want to go. While it's, of course, important to develop your industry-specific hard skills, there's one skill in particular that is of utmost importance. This skill extends beyond industries. Heck, you can even use it in your personal life. That skill is:
Follow Through šŖ
To put it simply, āFollow Throughā means to finish what you started. This could be a project, like creating an app/a website. Or, it could mean finishing the online course that you started.
To me, Follow Through means making your intentions a reality. Too often, weāll say weāll do something, and we might even start it one lucky weekend. But at the first sign of hardship, fatigue, boredom, or busyness, we abandon it all too easily and it sits in our garage (mental, figurative, or literal) for the rest of eternity.
What does Follow Through mean in relation to Tech? š
It means finishing your project: Developing an app, designing a UI, Publishing your case study, and your analysis.
It could also mean finishing that online course you started. Sticking through a 1-month long program. Watching the engaging as well as the boring videos. And (worst of all), finishing those tedious exercises and assignments.
You probably enrolled in 5-10 courses, thinking that you are going to study them together. You might have a list of unfinished - and a bigger list of unstarted - projects saved on your computer. I get it. I have a list too.
But hereās the thing. You need to release/finish your projects. Maybe not all of them. And chances are you arenāt going to like them. Nah, they will probably suck tbh. But you need to release/publish those sucky projects no matter what. You need to have the follow-through to get it done.
Hereās why:
What happens when you Follow Through
1. It allows you to grow thicker skin šæ
Chances are at some point in your journey, youāve received some negative comments. Perhaps from your family, colleagues, or friends. Perhaps you want to get into Tech, coming from a non-cs/it background. And while you might be resolute with your decision, someone told you that this is not a good idea. Or, perhaps creating that big project is just crazy. If you are someone who finishes what you plan, if you have follow-through, then othersā opinions will start making less effect.
2. It lays a solid foundation āļø
If you are just starting out, you are not going to work on a commercial project anytime soon. But you have to create these silly, small projects if you want to get there. You arenāt making commercial projects by just making commercial projects. Because, ultimately, you CANT. You donāt how to do it. You arenāt competent, you lack the design/architecture/project management insights. You need to start small, and you need to release mediocre projects.
So if you have a simple static website, with basic functionalities - you should host it (for now, use free hosting). And call it a day. You will receive terrible reviews. But, thatās okay. You just hosted your first website.
3. It will help build discipline šŖ
Follow-through applies in your studies as well. Itās very tempting to register for a specialization, or for a +40-hour course on Udemy/Youtube. But, you most likely wonāt finish the entire program. Again - you need to start small and build your way up.
Instead of joining a 6-month program, why not start with 1? Complete the smaller course end-to-end. Itās wiser to learn 100% from a smaller course than to learn incompletely from a bigger program.
Finally, once you get the hang of 1-month courses, then you can enroll in bigger programs. By now, you must have acquired the discipline and follow-through, to help you finish your projects.
4. Quantity begets Quality š”
With the internet making it easier than ever for more people to create and share their work, there's a lot more low-quality workaround, and we're all struggling to find the diamonds in the rough.
Unfortunately, thinking that quantity and quality are mutually exclusive and that low-quality work is something we should never create isn't as healthy an attitude as I'd thought. It turns out that quantity has a real purpose for those of us creating new work. Whether we're writing software at work, building side projects, or even writing a blog, quantity is just as important as quality.
The reason is that we can't create high-quality work without doing a bunch of junk first.
Think back to the first program you ever wrote, or the first software project you ever launched to the world. It probably wasn't very impressive, right? Of course it wasn't! Because none of us can start with amazing work. Even a genius has to spend time making bad (or at least average) work in order to improve.
We've been thinking about quantity vs. quality all wrong. It's not a competition at all. Rather, the truth is that quantity begets quality.
5. Follow-through helps break the Imposter Syndrome š
When you release your project, you go from āIām dreaming about, and Iām an idiotā, āMy parents think I canāt do itā, or āMy friends and family think Iām wasting my timeā, to āI released projects. This is legitā.
As you create crap projects, you get better & better. Your mentality slowly shifts.
This affirmation is really important. That you have actually entered the field, you arenāt dreaming anymore.
To conclude...
So Iād recommend that you start releasing smaller projects. Or start learning smaller courses/books. That ultimately will train the mental muscle of follow-through. Think of Follow-through as a muscle. The more you train it, the stronger it becomes.
Imagine if you have the follow-through of some of the biggest entrepreneurs, innovators, developers, or designers. Where you say āwe have a project. Hereās the plan. Hereās the budget, the deadlineā¦ā and you have the follow-through to actually complete the entire project.
Imagine doing that now, when you havenāt created anything. When all you have is a simple website/app/design. Itās okay. Itās crappy. People arenāt gonna like it. But years from now, you are going to look back and be glad that you created these small projects. That you developed that follow-through.
