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  • February 16, 2019

“You’ve come a long way baby” Weekly Review: Jan 27 – Feb 2, 2019

February 4, 2019 by Will Lam Leave a Comment

It’s been well over a month since my last journal entry. Something that I’ve been neglecting is hearing, listening and actually heeding what my gut tells me after a pretty fucking tough 2018.

The main theme of 2018 is that I’ve coped with stress in unacceptable and unhealthy ways that impacted my energy and the people around me. It was something that was something that slowly crept up on me. Sparing all the gory details, I think I’m on a much better path after taking stock of my situation and viewing everything through the lens of gratitude, with my trusty and dusty 5 Minute Journal that’s the cornerstone of just feeling like I’m on solid ground.

Something I revealed to two dear friends of mine was that I was just tired of disappointment. Setbacks professionally and personally felt a bit too much to handle and I didn’t have the outlets that I previously had to maintain some semblance of emotional resilience were whittled away from the boundaries and stresses of work I was ever so slowly ceding. It wore away at my self-worth. I created threats in my head. There were also countless things that I had started but never followed through on which put me further down a spiral and the self-created pain had created such a heavy burden that all I could think of escaping and placating myself with sleep and other unhealthy ways of dealing with stress.

It all led up to me having to reach out personally to trusted friends, and eventually seeking professional help in the form of a therapist.

But this post isn’t about all the little fuckups and set backs. This post is about the little victories and wins. Every hard fought inch that is slowly helping me turn around and navigate back into not so stormy weather if you will.

As with my previous reviews, I’ll be covering categories of improvement, which for me are:

  • 💪Fitness/Mental Health
  • 🤑Personal Finance
  • 🤓Learning.

💪Fitness & Mental Health:

This category is a hybrid one that encompasses not just fitness in the traditional sense, going to the gym, the consistency, the meal planning etc. It’s also everything else that doesn’t take place in the gym, the rituals, the sleep for recovery, the mental health practices that involve meditation and self reflection. All of that adds up to overall health and a healthy outlook on life and having the resilience to deal with whatever fucked up shit comes our way.

This past week was awesome, not because I went to the gym 3 times, but because I once on my own without much cajoling and twice doing some workouts from P90X with my partner. It was really fun and I highly recommend it working out with your partner!

Other than that, I made an emphasis to sleep earlier to give my body some time to adjust and recover, but to also allow myself to not be a complete grumpy rat bastard when I’m running on only 6 hours of sleep (or less).

Most importantly, I’m carving out time for myself in the evening to wind down before bed to reflect on my day, do a rough plan of my day ahead and then give myself a dose of 7+ hours of sleep.

During my mornings, I’m finally putting to use my Muse meditation headband that has been lying around and collecting dust for the last 2 and a half years. I squeezed in 4 sessions, starting off with 3 minutes, and the fourth session being about 12 minutes. I’d like to meditate every weekday for at least 15 minutes before heading into work.

🤑Personal Finance:

My relationship with my finances hasn’t been the best, but after having paid off my student loans and now that I’m on the last bit of my line of credit, I’m starting to build up savings again. Roughly, I’m planning for saving at least $1500 a month as a conservative amount after I factor in all my expenses and vacations.

Might go further into to detail, but I’ll definitely be sharing more details about my consumption, savings and approach to building wealth later on.

🍜Learning :

One thing I’d like to do is focus on learning a new thing a week. While it has never been a consistent thing, I’d like to actually write about what I’m learning and how it’s bringing more structure and happiness to my life. One of things that I’ve often neglected is doing creative things with my hands(tm). That may entail cooking or some sort of art like origami or gloving or learning how to DJ, which is most likely next week..🎛

This past week, I learned how to make traditional Vietnamese pho (beef noodle soup) for the first time after my mom sent me a pretty decent recipe. If anything I should be learning more things from my mom in the future.

This week, I’m going to be digging into wrapping my head around some SQL queries for work.. maybe I’ll abstract that and turn it into a mini blog post.

Going forward…

My goal isn’t to be relentless and beating myself up for not being able to hit all my high falutin’ and lofty goals. It’s more so being more gentle to myself and the language and internal dialogue I have with myself, while still moving forward. As cheesy as it may sound, I’m more interested in the journey that’s more kinder and gentler to myself. However, that’s not to be confused with flip flopping or backing down on the promises I make to myself. Consistency and resilience are things to keep in mind for myself.

Filed Under: Fitness, Learning, Mental Health, Personal Development, Tracking, Weekly Reviews

2 Fast, 2 Furious: A Much Needed Rest for the 2nd Time Around

February 8, 2016 by Will Lam Leave a Comment

2 fast 2 furious lighthouse

The last 3 weeks at Lighthouse Labs have been nothing but challenging and amazing. I hate it sometimes because the curriculum will knock you down and won’t relent if you don’t prepare. But I love it because I wanted and needed this much needed pressure cooker of an environment. Let me re-state that again, it has been challenging and amazing in that I’ve never been pushed so hard intellectually in a very very long time. Maybe it will be the same for you if you’re considering Lighthouse.

Now that I’m at the half way point of the program, I have effectively “rolled over” to the next cohort as I didn’t demonstrate the deep understanding and confidence to continue. This is an option only afforded to students who have demonstrated the perseverance, hustle and commitment to succeed.

Apparently, it isn’t out of the ordinary for a program as rigorous as Lighthouse’. I’m effectively given a fresh “reboot” to go at it again, and I’m very grateful for the opportunity. I’ve chatted with a few other students who were in similar positions really appreciated the opportunity and kicked so much ass after sucking really bad due to unpreparedness.

This effectively extends my stint at Lighthouse Labs from 2 months to 4 months because there’s a month between my current cohort and the next one.

Your personal psychology

The hardest thing you would grapple with is your self image and self talk about yourself. You might feel stupid because you’re not able pick up everything and understand it – every single day, but that’s okay and it’s meant to be harder. In my situation, it was harder learning effectively on my own or learning part time even because of the split focus between professional work  and professional development proved to be

Let’s not misconstrue that you’re not smart enough to be in the program – that’s already been determined during their admission process (I think I am). However, the amount of time and pressure to learn new concepts and apply them for an entire 8 weeks is relentless and merciless. For some, not all, it will really rattle your confidence and that might be the thing that holds you back, the extra time needed to wrap your head around concepts being taught in class (because delegates amirite??).

A much needed rest eh? Slacker.

As for rest, I’m not really resting, I’m just learning at a more sustainable pace studying from 9 am to 8 pm or so, with a workout break programmed in at Totum Life Science which is a 2 minute walk around the corner from Lighthouse. I’m taking the revamped prep course seriously and will take on any extra work to fill in gaps so I won’t be caught off guard with how fast and furious the bootcamp is structured, with some buffer room built in to play with side projects.

Your first 720 hours as an iOS developer

Even if you make it through the bootcamp, it’s your first real 720 hours worth of time on your road to becoming a developer. That’s if you’re putting in 12 hours a day, day in day out for the entirety of the 8 weeks you’re there. If you’re solid on the fundamentals and take your prep course (which they’re still finalizing.. I’m envious of the new cohorts) seriously (almost as a precursor to the bootcamp .. and seriously.. take it seriously..as I mentioned before ), you should be in okay shape.

Filed Under: Challenges, Learning, Objective-C, Programming, Swift

Lighthouse Labs 2 weeks in – 25% down and 6 weeks to go

January 24, 2016 by Will Lam 1 Comment

lighthouse labs

A few people close to me have been wondering what Lighthouse Labs’ iOS Immersive Bootcamp has been like so far. I’ve been meaning to write about it on a week to week basis, but one week into the bootcamp, I was stressed beyond belief.

Truth be told, this sort of program isn’t for the faint of heart or those who aren’t ready to dig down deep inside.  You need to remember why they went through a stringent interview process, did a comprehensive prep course, and plunked down $9,040 in the first place. This is all in order to get our asses handed to us, truly immerse ourselves and learn.

During the first day when Khurram Virani (co-founder of Lighthouse Labs) had not so casually quipped, “We (Lighthouse Labs) own you for the next two months. Buckle up. It’ll be worth it.” He wasn’t joking.

It wasn’t until we had finished the first week that reality had sunk in and we had to fight to keep our heads above water or drown. We learned everything from object oriented programming, debugging, delegation/protocols, auto layout (programmatically!), the model-view-controller software design pattern, UIKit, UI Gesture Recognizers and so much more. All within two weeks. Yup.

There are some students in my cohort who are challenged to demonstrate their know how daily, are seemingly doing quite well. I wasn’t one of those students.

With all the material that was thrown at us, I’m slowly beginning their method to the madness. The beauty of this, while I still think is insane (in the best way of course), is the immersion that I mentioned earlier. You won’t get that learning from Treehouse or any other online resource or perhaps any other bootcamp. I see them as supplementary or a light intro at best after meddling with them and not getting far having grappled with them for the past two years since I decided it was very important for me creatively and professionally to learn to code.

What’s a “typical” day like so far?

Day in, day out, working on assignments, problems and re-wiring our brains to think like developers, breaking things down into digestible chunks. The analogy of  “eating an elephant one bite at a time” works best here. While I’m getting there and having a much more intimate idea of the inner workings of Objective-C, iOS and how everything really works. While it’s hard it’s really exciting and rewarding.

The good thing about Lighthouse so far has been my fellow students. They’re wicked smart and badasses in their own right in terms of solving problems and building stuff with some flair and polish, which is so impressive. As for myself.. I’m still a work in progress 😉

A bit about the instructors

I have to say, I’m really impressed with the instructors. They’ve got a strong pedigree of instructors and mentors. They’ve worked for world class companies and shipped apps that have touched millions of users. Their level of understanding of all things iOS is so deep to the point, where they can “see The Matrix” so to speak, which is great because they understand the pitfalls and know the ecosystem inside out. They’ve come from all backgrounds. While not formally trained as teachers, they certainly do have the propensity to teach and break down concepts into metaphors and analogies that are easily relatable and understood by our cohort.

Without having to gush any more than I need to about how awesome they are, they simply out care anyone else out there. I don’t know of any other coding schools that collect so many data points on their students and iteratively improve their program. How this works in real life is that their bootcamps get better and better over time, much like how software should be developed. I’m kind of jealous of future cohorts.

The next six weeks

While I don’t anticipate it getting any easier, it really boils down to how committed we are and going back to the basic purpose of why we want to go through such a demanding program to begin with. It’ll push you down and make you feel like shit, but understanding that it’s okay to really (really) suck at first, is a bit of a comfort.

As things start to click, slowly (or faster) depending on how you take to this style of learning, things will make sense. I’m beginning to make sense of it. You really do get what you put in. While there will be a lot of doubt in your abilities, there’s only room to learn, grow, test your mettle, become grittier and increase your tenacity to persevere on the problem(s) at hand. That’s what it’s been all about for me so far.

I can’t wait to dig down deeper as I’m learning more and more about myself (and of course iOS) everyday.

Filed Under: Learning, Objective-C, Personal Development, Swift

Navigation Controllers

January 3, 2016 by Will Lam Leave a Comment

I’ve been struggling with the Treehouse Objective-C iOS track. I don’t know what it is about the course so far, but I’m trying to deal with it the best way possible. I feel a bit of stress bubbling up lately and I’ve decided to meditate in between long sessions with Calm’s meditation app on Android. Maybe it’s a placebo effect, but it has been helpful. I’m only on day 2, but I’d like to feel a bit more grounded and calmer otherwise, distraction, doubt, frustration and other negative thoughts sink into my studying sessions, which make for a less than ideal learning environment

In any case, with respect to the Playlist app that I’ve just started, I just started tinkering around with Navigation controllers.

Take a look below to see how it works. It’s used for hierarchical views, such as Playlists (duh) or anything that requires a bit more detail as you dig into an object that you’re displaying on a screen, be it song, a to-do item etc. Here we also learned how to add a second view controller and making it inherit from the original view controller, as well as renaming the newer view controller.

Filed Under: Challenges, Learning, Objective-C, Programming, Treehouse

Day 43: Revisiting Foundations

November 20, 2015 by Will Lam Leave a Comment

Day 43 - Revisiting FoundationsNot much to write about or anything earth shattering. Today I’m not going to share code because while going through C Programming – The Absolute Beginner’s Guide – it goes through the basics in a way that is approach for the, well, absolute beginner. But then I just realized, at the moment I wrote “earth shattering”, that we really shouldn’t feel that way because when we’re learning programming, it’s all derived from the foundational material, be it loops, arrays, strings or if/else statements.

I think the fundamental challenge is having the resolve and consistency to be able to tame our computers – to bend it to our will and make it do what we want – not the other way around. That through consistent effort of learning by doing – fucking up, learning from our mistakes and doing it all over again – true progress happens. Real learning stems from venturing outside of our comfort zones and incorporating what we learned, and building some new in a context that we might not have thought.

This whole goddamn programming thing shouldn’t be something that’s so complex because we’re really freakin’ smart human beings standing on the shoulders of giants before us that empower us with all the cool shit they’ve built, from Assembly all the way to your latest flavour of Javascript that powers the internets and mobile apps.

Not to say that you can pick it up right away (if someone knows a faster way, please let me know…), but immersing yourself and learning programming for the right reasons such as the inherent nature to build and create value are something that should be things that go through your head when people ask you “So why do you want to learn how to code?”. It should be a no brainer – regardless of job or whatever, your reasons should be rock solid, so that when you’re hitting walls, you’re not going to give up at the first opportunity.

Filed Under: Challenges, Learning, Objective-C, Programming, Treehouse

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