I am beginning the seventh week of my apprenticeship today, which seems crazy. It has flown by so far, and not just the weeks. Most days lunch time takes me by surpise, and the end of the day seems to follow it immediately. I’m beginning to wonder whether the 8th Light office is in some kind of time warp. It’s probably more likely that I’m just busy during the days and so time feels to pass faster, but I’m not going rule out the time warp theory either.

Anyway, two weeks ago, I had a retrospective. We talked about many things, but something I had been feeling was whether I was doing enough. It wasn’t that I felt like I wasn’t working hard, I knew I was, but how hard should I be working? How much am I expected to achieve in my weekly nine points? I knew this apprenticeship was never going to be a 9 to 5 job, and I definitley work more than that, but I couldn’t help wonder how much I could do. My only previous experience of coding continuously was at Makers. That too was not a 9 to 5 experience, but the pace I was working at was not maintainable. Makers taught me that I could work between ten and twelve hours a day, seven days a week, for twelve weeks. It also taught me that once that twelve weeks was up, I would not feel great. If I were to try and do as much here as I did at Makers, then I doubt I’d look forward to work as much as I do.

I mentioned my concerns in the retrospective, trying to convey that I wanted to push myself a little harder to find that spot of balance between working hard, achieving as much as I could, but not working so hard that I exhausted myself. So I commited to trying to be less pessimistic with my estimates so that I could fit more stories into my week and see how much I could do. One of the great things about weekly iterations is that I can try something one week, and if I give myself too much to do and feel like I’m having to push too hard to deliver, I can modify for the next week.

So last week I tried to be a little less pessimistic with my estimates. This, perhaps, was not the best week to try it. I was implementing a perfect computer player in my Tic Tac Toe (Less than 3 points for that. Good joke Mollie) and I started a data structures and algorithms course, which we agreed that I could do in my waza time and so it didn’t get any points.

By Thursday evening, I knew I wasn’t going to finish all my stories by Friday afternoon. I knew I’d be working over the weekend, and I was ok with that. I really felt like I was working hard, having to push myself to get everything done, and really enjoying it. What I found strange was that I didn’t feel any panic about how much I had to do, but more of an excitement about my stories, especially as I knew I had the buffer of the weekend to make sure I delivered all of them. It didn’t feel like a sprint, but of course, I don’t fancy working all weekend every weekend, but I know that once in a while, I can do it and not feel exhausted at the end.

But there have been casualties of my higher pressure week, namely this blog. A product of my retrospective was that I would not longer have to blog every day, but should try and focus on more detailed blog posts about something specific I’ve learnt. I agreed with this, but seeing how sporadic my posts have become makes me feel that perhaps the discipline of daily blogging hadn’t quite sunk in, and I would like it to. Blogging is too important to be the thing I begrudgingly do when I feel like I’m too busy with my other stories. It should be something I just do, even if it’s just noting down something important I’ve learnt to pick up later in more detail. It’s also something I enjoy. I like to write, and I know how important it is to improve my writing.

So I’m going back to daily blogging. Some of my posts will be a more detailed, technical explorations of something I’ve learnt, some will be a bit more like this one and a simple reflection on how I’m feeling. And after last week I’m feeling pretty confident that I can add more to my week, and keep pushing until I find that balance where I know I’m working really hard, but not too hard.