26/09/2014

Landing your dream job sooner

Since January 2012,  I started using resources on the internet for my career development because of a limited training budget. I felt so excited that I had world-class trainings from Amazon, Twitter, Udemy, edX and General Assembly without a big budget just like friends from big corporates. But I did find there are several roadblocks:


  1. What is next step for my career? I don’t know
  2. Time wasted on low quality resources
  3. Time and knowledge wasted while changing topics


During the last one and half years, I personally discovered several ways which help me focus and improve effectiveness for informal learning.


As I am from a software development background there are two choices, either continue being an individual contributor and becoming an architect or improving my leadership and people management skills. As I was not a native english speaker and my communication skills were not great,  an easier choice would be to become architect. But I love working with people and helping others grow in their career. So I have been working toward the people management direction with a guide from several good friends and mentors.


With that in mind, I started cleaning up twitter followings which were my major social resources for learning so that I can keep focused. A great resource I recently found was LinkedIn Pulse which had some great articles, however I did find their recommendation didn’t work well for my learning purpose.


Since December 2013, I started to create  monthly goals for a skill with one or two keywords from books and online courses. I found that works really well to keep me focused and bring up my specific skills. With a goal in mind, I am not so distracted by different topics and interests too. Of course, I can still learn other topics. But those are chosen with more care now.


This year during Melbourne’s LAST (Lean Agile System Thinking) conference I presented “Agility for Big Data” . This helps businesses deliver big data application into the market with shorter timeframe.  


We are developing a product that defines career paths with mentors, recommends high quality resources and keeps track of your activities toward goals.  Even better, we can develop the product with your input to bring an innovative and affordable learning experience.


Please find my contact details below:


Mobile: 0401 651 178
Email: charlie@kareertracker.com

How to join as our ProUsers (Android App only at the moment, iOS app out around Decmember 2014)
1. Register as our ProUsers by registering to this group:http://groups.google.com/d/forum/kareertracker-prousers
2. After that, wait around 4~5 mins, then access the following URL to confirm as beta testing user for Android App:https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.studyisfun.kareertracker
3. There is download link after confirm as testing user, download and you have a KareerTracker in your hand now

23/09/2014

Build Habits and Enjoy Life - 1

A day in December 2013,  my days started with I pushed my little girl going to kinder garden. She cried and I still tried to push because I definitely would be late. And in the office, I faced with many "urgent" issues. It made myself feel important. But there is NOTHING important which has been done. After coming, I read a story to my little girl in a hurry and try to come back either trying to catch-up in technical front or catch-up in people management books. It was a typical day for me in any day in 2013. But luckily, I start listening an audio book "7 Habits of Highly Effective People" (Stephen Covey) from audible.com. The book opens me new view about my life and with my knowledge lean Kanban, I started a journey of changing myself from January 2014.

With identify my missions, quantify my goals and measuring my progress towards goals, my life has changed a lot.

In past 7 months, I have lost 16 kg and much healthier than before. Now my day starts with waiting for my girls prepares herself for kinder garden. My job doesn't full of "urgent" things. I starts to focus more value generation instead of just solving problems. And I have more free time to improve myself and start dedicating one of weekend to my family. And I am starting to find out my dream and starting build a startup for that.










I want to share my experience with you.

Build Your Mission

The missions has guided my activity in past 8 months. The biggest benefits that I get from these is that I can prioritize things in my life very easily with these. I personally compared the ordered books from me in Amazon.com. This year's books are all about two topics. But last years, it is around five topics. Although I dont read as many books as last year, I did feel that my skills around two topics have become much better comparing with last year. In the job, I personally tried to involved less in the activities that I don't have in my mission statement. With that, I can focus on the things that I have more interest on.

And in summary, I have focus things more important for my long term goals.

With guidance from the book, I personally classified my missions into 4 parts. They are:
  • Career Development and Path
  • Family and its value
  • Community (People around you and what is your value to community)
  • Healthy and other long term goals
All of them are important to my personal growth and feelings. 

There is the tool at Franklin Covey website, http://www.franklincovey.com/msb/, which help me a lot on building my personal mission and my family mission. 

If you have any question, feel free to let me know. In the following sessions, I will share about my experience in the following topics:

  • How to create quantified annual goals from your missions
  • Create first milestones for you goals and how to create feedback loop
  • Time management with prioritization and Kanban
  • Try different solutions but keep focus
  • Dont forget about celeberation