Modifying Expectations

Tom Landry once said:

Setting a goal is not the main thing. It is deciding how you will go about achieving it and staying with that plan.

Everyone likes being linked to the adjective "goal-oriented". The truth is, goals are great, yeah. But sometimes, life doesn't always happen the way we planned. Some circumstances could arise and make our once-achievable goal seem utterly impossible. In times like this, it is advised to take a seat and have some quiet time. I will like to say:

My quiet time is a time when I take myself away from external distractions and take a look at myself, reflecting on my actions, circumstances, and goals. This is the time I get to evaluate myself:

• what are my goals?

• what actions are needed to achieve them?

• which of these actions have I made a habit of?

• what have I ignored?

• what do I pay more attention to?

• how closer am I to my goals?

• what is holding me back?

• how do I eliminate or bypass these blockers?

My quiet time helps me be more self-aware. I can easily tell what goals have become unachievable based on my previous actions and decisions. I can then modify my actions to suit my goals.

My Project Timeline

When submitting my final application to Outreachy, I created and submitted a project timeline. This timeline shared across the 13 weeks of the internship, the different tasks I was to do to cover the scope of my project by the end of the internship. The project I was to work on, in my case was modifying Android Tests.

I divided the various tasks across each android-related project in ODK-X and wrote down what each week entails and what should have been done by the end of each week.

When the internship began, I was quite excited and confident, because I knew I had created a very detailed project timeline that will most definitely be easy to follow. Yup, this is what setting goals and action points do. It makes you confident because you have a plan.

But now, what if, along the journey, your plan doesn't quite seem to work? What do you do then? Well, that was my case😂.

A Series of Unexpected Events

Oh well... "Nothing in software engineering ever goes as planned" is a pretty common phrase I hear developers say a lot.

Firstly, ODK-X is a pretty large project and I realized I didn't know as much as I thought. Code reviews and requested changes. Much more studying because there were a lot of learning gaps I needed to fill. Boom! I was two weeks behind in my project timeline... Oops!

This was quite a realization because I got so busy learning, fixing stuff, updating code, cleaning up code, and making corrections where needed that I didn't realize I was two weeks behind schedule, a week into the second half of the internship.

What brought this wake-up call, was when my Mentor, Waylon encouraged me to give more time to a particular project called Tables. This was because the project didn't just have unit tests, it also had UX tests, which might be a lot more difficult and time-consuming. And guess what? In my project timeline, I had scheduled a week for that. whoa!

I needed to modify my project timeline and figure out what was slowing me down ASAP. This was week eight and I was still making corrections to week 6's PR! I had to restrategize quickly, to ensure I finished up my internship in time.

What Did I Do?

Firstly, I had to shrink the time I gave the current project I was on by half. You might ask, how will achieving that goal ever be possible? Oh well, I also had done some homework.

What Was Taking So Much of My Time?

I realized that most of the code reviews were for code clean-ups, like oversimplifying a code into fewer lines of complex code. Waylon advised that in open source, being explicit is more. This way, codes will be easier to understand by different people. Thus most of these code clean-ups were not a priority. I had to cut down on this and focus on the main task: Removing deprecated code. Also, I had to ask more questions, so I don't find myself doing unnecessary work or having to redo work all the time. I also ensured that I gave more time to the testing course I was on at the time.

The Results?

Massive! Guess what? I was able to accomplish four weeks' worth of work from my previous project timeline in a week. This made it possible for me to catch up on the two weeks' decline I had and give me one free week. This way, I was able to allocate two weeks to tables. I still plan on following up with this plan and seeing how much more I can achieve by the end of this week. And then probably I will have some time to write some new tests before the thirteenth week runs out.

In All...

Yeah, setting goals is great, but what's more important is taking a step back sometimes to see your tracks so you will know for sure if your current and previous actions are taking you closer to your goals or farther away from them. You can always modify your current actions and make habits of the actions that will take you closer to your goals. This will curb frustrations and give you better confidence and perspective on your goals. You will feel more like the god of your life creating and removing things that are and aren't worthy.

Well, this is all from me here, at least for now😊

Till next time, as always Cheers!😊

And Yes, Thank you for keeping up with me🙈

I appreciate that ❤️