Honestly Evaluating

I think it’s finally time to be honest with myself. It’s all well and good just ploughing on with my assignment, mindlessly doing one task after another, but what’s the point if I don’t feel like I’m improving? At the end of the day, at the end of these two years, I want to be employable. And to be that I’m going to need to be able to do more than write a good essay or build a good website. “Surely that’s all it’s about?” you’re probably saying right now. Well, read on to find out that it most certainly isn’t.

If I look back at my last assignment at about the same point at where I am at now, I was panicking. It was getting to the point where my mind was struggling to think what to do next, and all the time plans were out of the window. I’d gone so past the point of no return with the time plans and left them on the way side for too long that I didn’t consider I needed them. I thought I should just do each task in sequential order. This turned out to be a complete and utter disaster, and I was getting close to burning out. It got that bad. Already I can see I’ve improved with the time planning, and instead of worrying about what I have left to do, I’m taking each task one at a time. It’s taken off a lot of stress, and planning weekly without thinking about the bigger picture has helped me to reduce the stress considerably.

Where am I at now then? Well, the time planning is working better. This time around I’ve actually realised they need to be used, but it’s going more gradually than I expected. I thought I could just launch straight into time planning and be able to do it instantly with a bit of discipline, but that’s precisely the time when I realised another cold hard fact. I have very little self discipline.

Sure, I’m good at turning up at college on time, turning up to work on time, ringing someone when they asked, but when it comes to doing activities that have no consequence whether I do them or not, I struggle to force myself to do them. At the start of the course and at the start of the first assignment, I was bloody awful for this. I smiled on the outside and said everything was going ok, but inside everything couldn’t have been further from it. I thought I didn’t need them. If I look back to now, things are much better. I’m using time plans on a weekly basis, but still not to a satisfactory level for me.

Which leads me to another problem I have, the fact that I’m constantly striving for something better. Instead of being happy with the current product, I’m always thinking that I could have done something differently, I could have done something more perfectly. The fact that I’m seeing this particular attribute of my personality as a bad thing is all the proof you need that I’m an obsessive perfectionist. Clearly this is something that will never change, but instead of changing it I must look at it from a different angle. Instead of saying I could have done this better, I need to actually do it better next time. If this doesn’t happen, I need to question myself and find out the reasons why.

I never see anything I produce as a good thing either. I always think anything I do is pants, and never see the positives in my own work. For this one thing in particular, I need to get more people to look at my work and give me feedback. When lots of people tell you your work is good or bad you know the truth then.

I’m slowly beginning to realise that although I have gripes with myself, I can see improvements in my actions already. I’m already using my sketchbook more actively and the blogs more actively, but the thing I was missing before was evaluating myself. There’s no point evaluating your current performance, because when you look at it like that you’re unlikely to change. You’ll put it down to the project rather than yourself. If I evaluate myself, I’ll realise that it’s me that needs to change.

All I have to do is take my progress one week at a time, instead of thinking I can improve instantly, and I’m going to have it cracked. Something I need to especially remember is this:

Anyone can learn a piece of software. It’s learning about yourself that’s the hard part.