Doing a career change into tech is hard work. There is an endless queue of things to learn and a perpetually moving target of knowing “enough”. When I first got started, I really struggled with this. In my previous work as a print graphic designer, it was easier for me to feel like I could know AllTheThingsTM. I could study design concepts and then get swift and efficient with the 2 main tools I used: Adobe InDesign and Illustrator. So when I started the switch to programming, I didn’t have any real skill in keeping my expectations and habits for learning in check. But there was something I was doing in my recreational life that was about to become extremely useful in my professional life and that was looking back down the mountain.

My husband and I lived in Denver for about 7 years. While we were there, we did a lot of hiking and snowshoeing. Hiking in the foothills and mountains in Colorado usually fell into this pattern: arrive at the trailhead around 10,500 feet, hike up up up up up up up, turn around, hike back down. Hiking up steep paths is hard work. You’ve got to keep a keen eye on the trail so you don’t twist an ankle. You go slowly if you’re carrying a heavy pack with camping supplies. And sometimes, it is so hard that it becomes a meditation of one step at a time and keeping an even breath as you go up up up.

Well that sounds kind of miserable. But it’s not if, every once in a while, you remember to stop, lift your eyes from the trail in front of you, turn around, and look down the mountain. After or even during a particularly tough stretch, when it occurred to me to turn around to see how far up we made it, I felt impressed! I mean, holy smokes, we came that far?! Of course that’s why my legs were tired and my heart rate was up. This is impressive work!

So back to tech. When you’re always focused on all of the programming languages, frameworks, and patterns you don’t know yet, when you spend your days surrounded by people who know things you don’t know, it’s natural for your mental legs to feel thanklessly tired and for your emotional heart rate to be up. It’s easy to believe you may never catch your breath. When you’re feeling this way, do yourself a favor and look back down the mountain. Give yourself a chance to see and appreciate all how far you’ve come and how much you’ve learned compared to when you started. Allow yourself to see the distance you’ve come and say: This is impressive work!

Okay, I want this in my life, but how do I look down a metaphorical Mountain?

Lol. Yeah. Looking down a physical mountain is a lot more straightforward than a mental one. Since we don’t have a dirt trail to follow, we have to do the work of leaving evidence for ourselves. Here are some of the ways I look back down my mountain:

Go back to refactor code in old projects

Now this is my favorite. In fact, I get so excited about this, I’ve written about it a few times. I love refactoring my old code because the process shines a very clear light on the trail I’ve been hiking. I can see the decisions I made based on what I knew at the time and then I get to tidy them up based on what I know now.

Teach somebody something

I get really excited whenever I have the opportunity to teach folks who are new to programming. Need to know how arrays or hashes work? Loops? Outputting something to a console? Git? I’m on it! When I take a moment to help a person understand a concept, I get a chance to reaffirm what I know. I get the joy of seeing someone learn something. And I get the chance to appreciate how many steps I’ve taken between the time I learned that thing and today. When I taught a group of RailsBridge Ruby newbies earlier this year, by the end of the day, I felt like a God of knowledge! Do I think I know everything? Hahahahahaha noooo way, but I knew everything that everyone in that room needed to know and that was all that was needed in that space at that time. It feels good to be enough.

Keep a list of daily or weekly accomplishments

This one is the hardest for me. Sometimes it’s hard to remember to write down the little wins as they happen, but I sure like it when I get to look back at them later. To help myself do this, I have it on my calendar to recap the week’s accomplishments every Sunday morning. At the end of the year, on New Year’s Eve, I read the whole list, and that moment is pretty satisfying. I also keep a list of tech-specific learnings in a searchable TIL (Today I Learned)-style journal. This was harder for me to do at first, but over time, it’s become a repository of hard-won lessons that I can reference when I forget how to do that thing. Because let’s be honest, tech skills are like a rotating inventory. Sometimes you have to go foraging way in the back of your memory, or most likely StackOverflow.com, and dust off something before you can use it again. When I review my TIL logs, it reminds me how much I’ve learned in the past week. It can be surprising to see how much I’ve learned in a week.

Remember that you can climb mountains

When you find yourself struggling with a hard thing, take a beat and remind yourself that you’ve struggled with and accomplished hard things before. Call it out! Tell yourself that you’re at the base of a mountain that you’re about to climb. Sure, you haven’t climbed this mountain before, but you’ve climbed other mountains, so you know what it feels like to struggle and you know what it feels like to succeed. Limber up. Tighten those backpack straps. You’ve got this.