What is Grit?
Grit is one of my favorite words. Its one of those words that encompasses a lot of my personal values when it comes to all aspects of life I strive to improve in. Be it in weightlifting, disc golf or everything tech that I want to learn and understand better than I do now.
Wikipedia defines grit in the following way: “grit is a positive, non-cognitive trait based on a person’s perseverance of effort combined with their passion for a particular long-term goal or end state (a powerful motivation to achieve an objective). This perseverance of effort helps people overcome obstacles or challenges to accomplishment and drives people to achieve.”
When I started to lean towards IT, I had small kids at home, and a full-time job as a teacher in a kindergarden. For several reasons I was mentally exhausted when I came home from work and I was rarely happy leaving for work. I had to make a change.
I started small - doing some small python courses here and there when the kids went to bed. Each night, weekdays and weekends. Slowly I started to understand some concepts. After another while I discovered a front-end course using Javascript, HTML and CSS. I sat down and learned more about that every time I had time to spare.
After a few months I was sure - this is something I want to pursue. Learning about cloud, networking, programming, logic, systems. Everything were interesting. So I sat down with the misses and we planned out how we could keep the wheels spinning if I started a full time study.
The solution was that I worked 2 days a week to have some income while studying full time. I signed up to a 2 year degree. The entire study was online so I had time to do it in the evenings and weekends.
After 1 year I got contacted on LinkedIn by a recruiter. Keeping my LinkedIn profile updated payed off huge. I got through the interviews and cases and started a full time job as a Business Data Analyst for a big oil- and energy company. The only “downside” was that I still had almost a full year of full time study left.
I wanted to finish what I started and get that degree.
Motivation vs grit
It’s no secret that my motivation were not always there to sit down and study after a full days work and playing with the kids until their bedtime. This is were grit comes in. I had a goal in mind. Failing or dropping out was no option. I spent weekends in the library. Long evenings studying with not enough sleep during most of the weekdays in that period.
When I finally passed and got my degree I was so happy. More job offerings started arriving. It was magnificent to get the feeling that the hard work payed off. And I learned more than before - motivation is a good start - grit is what gets you over the finish line in the end.
To round off let me be the first to say that when I start something new I get a feeling of FOMO and “shiny object syndrome”. It’s my brain telling me that maybe there is a better guide/tutorial/book/video for the topic I am learning and researching. But I can guarantee, sticking it out will always be better. Finish what you start.
When I hear people talk about “tutorial hell” - I think they might fall into the former category - the “shiny object syndrome” one.
Happy learning, stay curious.