This week’s spark discussion was to reflect back on our studies so far. I’ve replicated my post from the discussion forum here as I wanted to include it in my reflective journal as well.
This week and continually throughout your studies, we ask you to engage in open and honest critical reflection. Reflection can be employed on-action for past experiences, in-action for the present and for-action in the future. Use the forum below to share some reflections about your present situation, using all three perspectives:
- Reflect on-action – What critical incidents led you to enroll on the course?
- Reflect in-action – What critical incidents, if any, are you experiencing?
- Reflect for-action – How are the first two points shaping your outlook for the future?
Past Reflection — What critical incidents led you to enroll on the course?
If I’m truly honest, I’d become very disillusioned with the day job. I won’t go into the reasons here but let’s just say I’m looking for an exit. Looking at the bigger picture I suspect, in part, I really want to return to being my own boss and running a business again. I loved the freedom and flexibility I had during this period of my life and I truly believe it gave me my family back because I could schedule the work around my children. Those 8 years are very precious to me.
I saw the pandemic as a ‘rut breaker’**. It was a chance to press pause and step outside my routine, somnambulistic comfort zone to try something different. I chose game development and loved it. I started to ask ‘what if…’
Contracting COVID was a game changer (my wife is a nurse and had COVID positive patients on her ward so I think that’s how I caught it). I’d never been so ill before and I made a promise to myself that when I recovered I’d do something more worthwhile and fun. ‘What if…’ became ‘I’ve decided to…’. It was my decision to go .
I’d already put in place a framework to develop and publish my first title when, quite by chance, I stumbled on the course. The course has moved my horizon slightly further out but I see that as a good thing. I’ve learned so much already and with each week that passes, the future becomes less of a nebulous blob and more of a tangible reality.
Present Reflection — What critical incidents, if any, are you experiencing?
The two biggest issues I’m aware of are: balancing time and my comfort zone.
Time pressures were always going to be an issue, in fact I wrote a blog post about it in the first couple of weeks. Making room for 20-25 hours of study each week was a challenge but I have a plan in place now that balances family, study and work. It’s a technique called the Default Diary that I’ve used before and works very well.
Then there is my comfort zone. It has the biggest, comfiest armchair in it you could possibly imagine. Leaving it is never easy. I keep looking at things and thinking ‘I know’ but the problem with ‘I know’ is it closes the mind, it makes it less receptive to new ideas and techniques. For instance ‘I know’ a lot about Agile: I was on the rollout team at Symbian in 2008, I’ve run several Agile teams locally and remotely, my own business was Agile, l introduced Agile to my current workplace. But in truth I only know one implementation. So when it comes to areas where ‘I know’ a lot already I need to be mindful that I’m also here to learn and discover and open my mind to new ideas. ‘I know’ is undoubtedly the most costly phrase ever, and not conducive to leaving the comfort zone.
Future Reflection — How are the first two points shaping your outlook for the future?
I look on the past as my motivator, my driving force to get me to my goals. It’s a constant reminder WHY I’m here. The WHAT and WHEN comes from a set of personal goals I defined when I applied that look out to 10-years, 5-years and 2-years, the most immediate featuring graduation and getting my doubloon. My goals are fixed (for now) but the path between them isn’t. With each passing week I’m finding the path can and does take interesting and unforeseen turns. I’m okay with that, it’s just a course change akin to one’s SatNav avoiding traffic jams and closed roads. The journey differs but the endpoint remains the same.
Case study…
For many years I’ve wanted to create games and always fallen at the first hurdle: the idea. I’ve messed around with coding, game mechanics and AI in the past, even had a bash at developing my own 3D game engine. Looking back, much of that was procrastination. I felt I was making forward progress by making myself busy when in fact I was doing everything I could to avoid the biggest problem: doing the hard work up front to get the good ideas.
One of the big changes for me personally has been getting the courage to step into that new arena, to delve deeper into the creativity and ideation phases rather than staying within the safe zone created by what I know. There’s still a lot more room for growth here. The baby steps I’ve taken thus far are just the beginning.
I’m leaving the comfort zone arm chair behind.
References
** Disclaimer
This post is in no way intended to belittle or discount the 1,000,000+ souls who have sadly passed as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak. My choice of words here was a personal reflection of the situation arising from the extraordinary circumstances within which we all now find ourselves. Whilst furloughed from work and subsequently contracting COVID-19 myself I took the decision to stop, re-invent myself and walk a different path in the future.
Photo by Felicia Buitenwerf on Unsplash
