This is Part 5 of a weekly series on my growth and development at a software startup in Austin Texas. Click here to view the full series or start at Level 1.

Week five was a pretty nothing week for me, I’m not going to lie. I’m finally getting into a routine at work, I’m making progress on some of my projects slowly.

This week was harder as a company because we were dealing with more customers leaving. My job is basically to keep our customers happy and make sure we’re keeping in good communication with them. So, while it’s not solely my fault for these customers leaving, much could have been helped if I had reached out to them sooner.

I’ve reached out to almost 100 of our customers since I’ve been here but my goal is to reach out to every single one of our customers each quarter. Just so that I can make sure we’re on the same page still with them.

It was a week full of ups and downs and lots of promising potential.

Level Five Stats

Weapons gained:

    • Connections + 4: Met several new people and had dinner with a few of them.
    • Ability + 2: Learned and started using Slack’s reminder feature. Super handy.
    • Knowledge + 6: I learned less in our software this week but I felt like I learned a lot more about the healthcare world in general because of some of the projects we’ve been working on.
    • Discipline + 2: I started adding a little bit of study time to my morning routine and I’m very excited about it. I love having time in the morning to really dig in and study something. Unfortunately, today (Saturday) was still fairly unproductive. I have plans for the next two Saturday mornings, so my plan is to start trying to plan stuff every Saturday morning so that I’m already going early on and can pick up some better habits/discipline.
    • Organization + 0: Didn’t learn anything new per-say. Just keeping up my current system for now.
    • Strength – 2: Went hiking on Friday which was amazing, but other than that, I am hardly doing anything else. Looking into adding an exercise routine of sorts very soon.

Kills:

  • Created a video for the support page

Deaths:

  • Had probably my worst call with one of our customers. I got them confused with one of our other customers because they had the same name. It caused immense confusion and annoyance.

Outside the Game

Went hiking on the Green Belt for the first time

Fixed my flat bike tire only to find the next morning that it didn’t fix it. Bought a new tire only to find it wasn’t the right size.

Haven’t played Ultimate in two weeks and desperately need to go.

Final Takeaways

I mentioned last week that it was a medium feeling week. In some ways this week was better but in most ways it was even worse. It’s like I’m in a routine that’s not helping or pushing me toward anything. I’m not done yet figuring it out but it’s got to be soon or I’m going to go crazy in this state of limbo.