Hey, this is Overpass Insights. My name is Eric and I make apps!
Now today, I want to talk about our perishable skills.
Alright, so it is a beautiful day in England today, or at least you know
where I live. The last couple of days there have been rain, and we had
heat last week. And today it's just like - it's a
perfect, perfect day. So, I decided to come out. Well, first of all
I went to the gym today for the second time well - for the second day in a row. But
like in five months, I finally started going back to the gym, and I was kind of
thinking - I got my workout equipment, I don't
really need to go to the gym anymore. But I thought, you know, I've paid for it
for this month. I might as well go and I really enjoyed it. But
this morning, I realized that you know, I'm not as strong as I used to be. At the
beginning of the five months. In my head, I'm like - I'm just as well
pretty much been keeping fit and everything like that.
And my legs are jelly! I did a leg workout so my legs are just like
shocked! They're just jelly. And then tonight
or just this evening, my kids wanted to come you know shoot
hoops. Just play a little bit of basketball, you know, of course, I'm
an American. Yeah, Basketball is part of my growing up. You know, we played
it in high school, we played it in - I played it in the army. And
when they were small, I can impress them with how well I can make baskets.
But I'm not so much anymore. I've you know, I've missed -
like I missed about 98 percent of the shots I tried to make tonight. So, it's a bit
humbling but, you know what, I haven't kept up the skills. I haven't
kept up the practice and that's just the way
things go, right? That's the way everything goes and another.
So and also, I've been doing a lot of coding lately which I've been talking
about and - as much as the skills, once you learn
those coding skills, once you learn those principles, they stay with you forever.
There's still a lot of time where you get to look things up. For some like
little things like date formats. Every time I need to look up a date format
like the MMDD, I always get that confused and I've been doing it for 22 years. And
I always have to look that kind of stuff up.
So, practice, practice, practice makes perfect. And if you go too long without coding, if
you go too long without doing YouTube videos, that's another
thing. Like I've been slacking on the YouTube channel
and you know, the more that I slack, the more that I don't get this kind of stuff
done then the harder it becomes, right?
So, I'm trying to increase the frequency of it, but
just like as software developers, I think as software developers,
we have a job that's different than anybody else's, right? If we were somebody
like if you were a consultant and just had to
sound smart all the time, then it would be easy, right? Because you
just have to look smart. You have to look the part. You don't have to actually be
with someone - someone who does. You know,
software developers, we have to know the skills. We have to do what we need to do.
And if a project takes us six hours, when it should have taken us one hour,
either our skills are off or something else has gone wrong, right? And for me,
things are taking me a little bit longer than -
than usual. But it is - it is back on the rise, right?
The nice thing I felt about having gone to the gym this morning even though
my legs feel like, I got old man legs today, even though
they feel that - I feel like, okay after this pause, after this
pandemic, right? After the descent after the
lethargy, starting to get things back.
Starting to claw our way back. I need to claw my way back in
a lot of areas of my life. But you know, in coding, I want to get
better at, you know, it's some of this stuff that I'm working
on. I need to get better at the channel because I've been kind of -
kind of getting a bit slacking. I mean, i knew I know you, guys, have noticed that
and also just in terms of the business - the business has been -
been stagnating a bit because of you know, just been like "oh,
why do it?" So gotta get that, you know back up and getting to the gym in the
morning. For those guys who work out every morning you know
that's the best way to get get your schedule back on track. To get that
routine back into your life. Anyway, my point today is we all have
skills and our skills are perishable. You have to keep them up and that's what
we have to do. We have to do it with basketball - to shoot baskets although
that's not an important one for me. I'm never going to go PRO. I mean, I know
you think I probably could. I'm never going to go PRO,
uh but the development skills, you know, I need to keep those up. The business
skills - need to keep those up. The video editing skills, need to keep
those up. Anyway, just wanted to show you guys thoughts,
share my thoughts with you, guys, today. I hope you're having a great day.
And I'll talk to you again next time.