This is Part 18 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.

A direct ask.

Level Eighteen Stats

Weapons gained:

  • Connections +2: Made several new solid connections outside of work and was able to join them for an ultimate frisbee game, but stayed pretty consistent with connections through work. My role is really shifting into what it needs to be now, so I am scheduling less meetings and gearing up to start presenting ROI’s to our customers.
  • Ability +4: I’ve been diving in and learning more about Salesforce this week. I found out the deeper I go into it, the more I hate it. How it ever got to be the 600lb gorilla in CRM’s is beyond me.
  • Knowledge +8: Wow. It never ceases to amaze me that I can continue to learn more about our platform even though I’ve been here for over four months. I ended up having to help on a few support items and didn’t have a clue how to. Gaining more knowledge in this plus the continued knowledge in Salesforce I mentioned above^
  • Discipline +8: Had a bit of a rough week with a lot of thoughts going through my mind, and usually this is when I really fall off the discipline game, but I was able to keep my routines and tasks ahead and stick to them. Felt like a huge adult-hood breakthrough
  • Organization -2: Coming out of having a ton of meetings for the last three months, and now shifting into building some presentations for more intentional meetings has been a hard switch on the organizational front. I need to work on separating the tasks into specific parts of my day, otherwise I find I get caught up in a bunch of other tasks without focusing on the most important ones.
  • Strength +2: I’ve been outside a lot working out which has been huge for gaining strength, but my morning workout routine kind of hit a cap I felt this week. I maybe will need to introduce some more activities to the morning workout so that I can work on continued strength.

Kills: May not sound like much, but I was able to follow-up with everyone I was supposed to by Friday night. I had a huge list this week and didn’t know how I was going to do it, but I was able to get an email out to all of them.

Deaths: Tying along with what I mentioned about organizing, it’s been a rough transition from my old flow of work to this new one. Definitely didn’t do as good of a job as I could have.

Outside the Game

It was a very relaxing week outside the game. A lot of self-reflection and deep thought was involved. I am generally extremely extroverted, but this week I turned into an introvert and enjoyed some time away from people.

Final Takeaways

Being completely caught up going into Monday is going to be a huge asset for getting the organization piece back and going. I’ve got a pretty chill day of meetings Monday, so I’m going to take some time to make a game plan for how I’m going to crush the week.