#004 The Mindset of Full Stack Thinking
A more detailed look at my framework for personal growth.
Front-end
For this week’s edition, I wanted to share an excerpt from an article I published this week explaining the philosophy behind Full Stack Thinking in more detail.
One of the biggest mistakes I tend to make when it comes to taking on a new goal, or trying to build a new habit, is to behave like there is a clear, defined destination for the winding road of self-improvement.
In reality, there is no such finish line.
A much more realistic way to think about it is to adopt an infinite mindset approach. This means to stop thinking about learning and growth as a pursuit with boundaries, seeing it instead as a continuous, ongoing endeavour that should last us our entire lives.
The same is true of full stack development. It’s such a broad field, with so many sprawling branches stemming from it, that it’s unlikely anybody can truly master everything in it.
And even if they could, technology marches on relentlessly. New frameworks, paradigms, and methods are created over time, so there really never is an end-point in the learning process for a developer. As with many technical things, the learning process never ends.
Once you stop worrying about when you’ll get to the finish line, the benefit is that you start thinking in terms of measurable improvement.
You’re no longer asking questions like “when will I be successful?” or “when will I become fitter?”
Now, you’re asking “when can I do something that I can’t do yet?”
When you’re thinking in these terms, your progress becomes more obvious because you’re focusing on the small improvements rather than the bigger picture.
For a developer, the ongoing task is to overcome these small hurdles. When learning a new language or tool, the smaller goal at first might be to do something simple, like write the classic “Hello world!” program. Soon enough, they’ll graduate to a harder task like implementing a loop or writing a simple function. Before you know it, they’ll be writing complex scripts without batting an eyelid.
Day after day, something new — however small — is being learned, and a skill gained. And these small learnings add up in learning to code, and the same is true of any skill in life.
“Knowledge is a skyscraper. You can take a shortcut with a fragile foundation of memorization, or build slowly upon a steel frame of understanding.”
When it comes to your personal development, you’re in it for the long haul. So take the small steps, take them often, and watch yourself get a tiny bit better each day.
Don’t think about where you’ll be in a year’s time; focus on being better than yesterday, and the rest will follow.
Database
Interesting things I found this week:
Is this enough? - this instagram post really caught my eye. It’s a lovely illustration of how we can lose sight of our past progress in the pursuit of more. I have some other thoughts on this, which I’ll save for a future email.
Enjoying the journey - Ali Abdaal is one of my favourite creators, and I’ve followed him for a number of years. This recent video of his is timely as it resonates with the key takeaways from my blog post. Definitely one to watch.
Comments
The best quote I came across this week:
“Great acts are made up of small deeds.”
Commits
Some things I did this week:
My Full Stack Thinking article got published in Curious, and it even got featured in their weekly newsletter!
I also managed to get my recent Bitcoin article featured on the editorial page of Geek Culture. It’s a look at how one of Bitcoin’s underrated benefits is its power to enable consumer choice.
If you enjoyed this, consider sharing with a friend. Thanks!
Jack