Go Big or go Broke

Alright I suppose there is a good amount to chat about, as I have skipped a recap or two.

Focus with progress but not perfect

I'm really doing my best to work things out as to what the most important things to focus on are. I haven't been as strict on tracking ALL of the time on specific tasks on the kanban flow now that I've broken up some stuff into features. The main thing I'm working on is just focusing, and the Focus@Will app really helps with that.

I've been going much slower with the finance app and I suppose a lot of it is that I've made it more complex than necessary by adding in all of the requirements such as x-editable etc. Either way it's okay in the end, but it's causing me to have a pushed back timeline. Something to learn from for sure. At least I am learning a TON and I'm very happy that it's finally getting resolved.

More pairing!

I've done quite a bit more pairing and it has been extremely helpful and FUN. The more I do it, the more excited I get because it's very enjoyable to work out problems with other people. I've been creating Google hangouts for people to join into via Codebuddies.org, in addition to offering to pair on challenges in various Slack chats.

I have enough leeway to cover my butt for about 1-2 months, and it would be simple enough to also apply to some other 'easy to get' or part time jobs as a 'just in case' for the mean-time.

My plan going forward

I've begun to ramp up the amount of job apps I'm putting in, as I KNOW I am 100% ready for a large number of positions and so I just have to get in front of people and interview. I've gotten to the point where I want to take the risk of just leaving my current job and making a final push to getting hired in a dev role. I think I am slowly losing my sanity trying to spend 40 hours a day doing something I absolutely despise after ALSO spending another 35-40 hours beforehand working my ass off on other things.

I'm going to try and be very disciplined and stick to some hard habits and techniques to keep myself running with high energy. My day should look something like the following if I leave my day job and do this job search full time:

1. Wake up between 6-7 hours of sleep via Sleep Timer app
2. Downstairs to get pre-brewed cold coffee from frig, and heat up / eat breakfast.
3. 20 minutes of meditation
4. Some quick exercise such as squats or pushups etc to get blood pumping
5. Write out my daily standup, (what did I do, what am I doing today)
6. Hot/Cold shower
7. Start working on project (inside a hangout if it makes sense)
8. Around Noon - do a workout. I haven't planned this yet...but maybe a bike ride or otherwise a guided exercise like Insanity / P90X
1. Also I would do this first thing in the morning, but I'm too afraid of having siezures in the first couple hours of waking up...I've had too many bad experiences with working out in the morning and injuring myself.
9. Continue working on project
10. Around 3ish, start doing networking stuff and filling out job apps etc. Need to get at least 5 completed ideally.
11. I'm not too worried about what happens after that. Most likely I'll either continue working on whatever I choose, or doing a blog post, or just pairing and doing learning at night. Can't force myself to be SUPER productive for more than 6-8 hours and expect good results.