 This is a perfectly valid question in many areas, but in terms of our careers, Dolly would say pour yourself a cup of ambition. So my aim for this talk is basically that, to have a think how we can review our own careers, to be more ambitious, to craft something that suits us individually for the best possible career we can have to suit ourselves and our whole lives. So I'm going to do that in three steps. The first step, first and foremost, think about where are you at? How does your work suit your life? What effect does it have on your life and on your health? Or as Dolly might say, don't get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life. So things to review, how are your sleep patterns, how are your energy levels? Record these every single day. Are you excited about what you're working on? Are you pleased with the results? Record it. Is your work satisfying? Is it the right level of challenge? I guess the slide comes from a psychologist whose name I can't pronounce but who talks about the mental state of flow of being completely absorbed in the activity you're doing. I think the diagram's interesting just to keep under review your feelings in relation to your skill level and the challenge level. So possibly if you're feeling anxious and stressed at work, it's because the challenge level is too high for your skill level. Or if you're bored or feeling apathy, perhaps the challenge level is just too low. So just to keep under review whether these things are external or internal and be aware of what you can do about those things. And record them. And recording these things on a daily basis might be as simple as just keeping a diary. Or our good friend Corey's mercury app where you can track your feelings about certain activities on a daily basis. And then you can easily go back and review that maybe on a monthly or quarterly basis. And so on to the second big part of the review. The question you might want to ask yourself is, where do you want to be? Or as Dolly might say, find out who you are and do it on purpose. Many of us in our teens at school, the careers advice didn't match our dreams and was very maybe focused on just putting people into a very small handful of boxes. In my school, if you were remotely good at math or science, you were shepherded towards medicine. If you weren't scientific, it was law. And if you weren't smart enough to do either of those two things, it was teaching. That's what we got. Well, that's what we got. I've always been stubborn enough to ignore any of that professional advice and did art instead. But we're big kids now. So what I think we should do is really focus on what we, you know, choice driven development. I think it should be called. One exercise that's useful to sort of determine if our choices match who we are and what would make us happiest is to look at what gives us meaning, which might be things like solving problems, writing, what gives us pleasure, which could be things like maybe reading or music and what are our strengths, which might be things like being enthusiastic or having good problem solving skills. And to note the trends between these three areas, identify areas of overlap and ideally then figure out how to manoeuvre your career to do things that are in that overlap area. Ask yourself what can I do on a practical level, what opportunities are available to me and also what limitations are there on me. These might be geographical, for example, but also ask yourself what do I want to do going back to what gives me meaning and pleasure. And perhaps you want much more than what you currently can do for whatever opportunities or limitations there are. And think about your competencies and how you can get to use these. I like to think of this as a sandwich. So you've got what you can do as your sort of base starting point. What you want to do, what you aspire to do. And your competencies are really the thing that will bridge that gap that can come in the middle and things that you can work on to maybe easier reach what you want to do, what you aspire to do. But it's a personal thing that will be different for each of us. It's worth actually defining what would be a win for me. One way to look at success is a combination of results, process and relationships. The result is fairly straightforward. It's not all about the Benjamins, but for most of us money is going to be a pretty important factor in our career choices. For many of us, a kind of success part of our results is solving problems and ideally helping create shiny happy people through solving those problems and creating software. In terms of process, how can our work and process contribute to our overall sense of success? Personally, I've been self-employed for 11 years now and I feel like I've done the workaholic thing and now I'm quite conscious that my time is precious. And I really want my work and process to fit in with my life. So for example, I do triathlon and it's really important to me that my work and process gives me flexibility that allows me to balance my work and the rest of my life. And the third big ingredient to that success formula is relationships. So I've worked a lot by myself, but I've also majorly in the last year made a conscious decision that I want to work as part of teams with specific people that I've sought out to work with and so I've been lucky enough last year that I got the opportunity from our friend CJ here to go to Sweden and work with company Elabs in Sweden, which was a wonderful experience, well, full stop, but essentially to work with people that we're not only good to work with, but we're, well, fun to drink with, but I guess people that you actually just want in your life regardless of whether you're being paid to sit next to them. And I've also kind of sought out and taken up opportunities to travel to the States and work with teams of brilliant people over there and whether it's people in a team I'm working with or with clients, a big part of sort of creating success in those relationships for me is feeling, deciding, do I feel valued basically in those relationships, but absolutely as well, do I value those people, if not with all of these things, they're just good things to keep under review, but like I say, that's a very personal process to go through and figure out what are those success factors for you, but those would be three key areas that I'd suggest would be worth including in that review, very much about finding a fit that works, that matches who I am and who I want to be in the world, how I want to be in the world. And basically if that fit isn't quite right, that you give yourself permission to say no, which you may not always decide to say, but just giving yourself the option to say it. And if this all sounds a bit selfish and me-me-me, what's in it for them, what's in it for maybe your boss or people that you're working with, someone who gives a fuck basically, someone who cares, if you're making those conscious decisions and making selections of what to do with your time, then absolutely the things that you do decide to do with your time, you're going to care a lot about. And that's a win-win for everybody. Basically being intentional, I think, is the key ingredient and leads to the good stuff. And so the third last big area of review, how do you support yourself to get there? As Dolly might say, if you don't like the road you're walking, start paving another one. And I've been speaking to a lot of friends in our industry recently about conscious decisions that have made, that they have enabled their success. And the common thread just seems to be people making an intentional choice about what they want to do. So James Golic has tweeted about leaving consultant and going to a company that works, that builds one product. And he's personally found that infinitely more rewarding. Guston here has spoken about a similar path to becoming a product-based company. Joe O'Brien told me about his deliberate choice, or actually self-awareness, really, I guess, of how, that his personal skills were to do with people. And that following, that was a conscious decision and has led to his success with Edgecase. Amy Hoy has spoken and written a lot about this, and her move from being a consultant. And I think this is a really valid point for a lot of us in our industry. She says, I'm a creator, I'm not a consultant. I discovered there's actually a difference, and I'm happiest making products and selling them directly. And Corey Haines has said, I don't ever want to be paid to write code. What I want to get paid for is helping others not get paid to write code. But the important point is really that every choice has a consequence. And making no choice very much has a consequence. So again, the key thing, just being intentional, whatever direction that leads you in, is going to be beneficial for you. And one strategy that I found to help support yourself to get to where you want to go is this idea of actually having a personal board, like your own personal board of directors. So rather than, so you select people amongst your peer group, your professional equals, that you can come to an agreement preferably to share, that you maybe spend, say, for example, what I've done in the past is with three of us, and we get together once a month, and each person gets half an hour to discuss the challenges they're facing, share that with these peers, and get feedback on how you can, on how you're approaching those challenges. And I guess people that will help hold you accountable to what you've said you want to achieve. I thought I'd share this wonderful quotation with you. If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And when I am for myself, what am I? And if not now, when? And I seem to have totally rushed through all that. So that's me. Any questions or feel free to share your thoughts with us? Right. Yeah. Oh, sorry. Good point. So Anthony said that I've mentioned tracking things like sleep and feelings with mercury.com. And I think the question was, is there anything else that I'm tracking? I track things like my sleep, my energy levels, just those things I mentioned, really. I mean, those are the big things and how I guess essentially how I feel about what I'm working on. I'll track some of those things on a daily basis and some on a weekly and some just on a periodical review, maybe looking back at what projects I've worked on, what people I've worked with. I mean, actually, this is something that's really come from my triathlon training, but looking back on things like projects I've worked on and considering what were the successes and failures in those and what conditions brought those things about. So what of the what within that formula I'd like to recreate the next time and what things I'd like to avoid. So the question if I interpret it right, so maybe in my sporting life, I guess I find that people are very direct and want to just get things done. And there's no messing about. And I think she was asking me, have I found that difficult to bring into the work life? I haven't, I think partly because I've been working mostly with Americans for the last year. And I find Americans to be much more direct and happy to give, actually happy to give praise when it's due, but also give constructive criticism when that's due. Whereas I think I find Americans to be very forthcoming and positive in their communication, actually. Whereas maybe British and Irish people, we can kind of bitch a little bit more behind people's back and go around things sideways. So it hasn't, you know, it's had a it's been beneficial or it's certainly been feel like it's been accepted. I think people welcome most people welcome not anybody. I guess also I'm making a conscious decision to associate with the kind of people I want to associate with and people who are successful in whatever their field is. And generally, my experience is that the people are successful are all quite direct up front. What you see is what you get people. I was going, it's really hard to paraphrase the question. Well, I did. All right, I, I need to re hear the question. So it's the question, like, do I have, I felt it's been beneficial to sort of curious. Yeah. So did you find that change? Right, right. Yeah, I guess it's helped in just setting goals and in working towards those. And I'm partly just organization and being really conscious of time, and making sure that whatever I do spend my time on is a, you know, a conscious choice. Yeah, that's probably a big query. When you decide that you want to do it, do you spend a little bit of time figuring out how you're going to do it? And then how do you purposefully, like, do you set up time to purposefully reflect? Because I find that I always end up just sort of going on and tracking it. And then never, I don't know how to look back at it. Right, right. No, I can use that. I guess I guess I cheat a little bit because I have a coach for my sport. So I have to, I report back to him on a weekly basis. And part of, part of that is how my energy levels are and how my sleep patterns are. So I report back as it, I'm really aware of the effect that it has, you know, immediately. So if I didn't have that, I guess it would be more of an issue because I mean, I don't keep a prickly fancy system for this. It might just be scribbling on a notebook on my desk. So if I didn't have that, now knowing the benefit of that, I would probably want to maybe set aside half an hour a week to review the week, even if it's just to myself. Yeah. How did I, how did I pick it? Okay, so the question about the personal board, how did I select those people? Through friends, really, just, oh, prickly. Actually, the people that I have done that with aren't in the software development field, just people that I respect and value and know that they respect and value me as well. So I've done it with two friends, one who's an interior designer and one who's a digital animator. And it's just an agreement that we've come to that's worked for us. I think the important kind of part of that is that they're professionally equal to you, rather than, I know we have a lot of talk in the community about mentors and apprenticeships and that kind of thing, whereas this is something different, more that you're, you're not looking for these people to tell you what to do. You're, you're just wanting to share what challenges you're having and just have that dialogue with people who are probably facing similar, similar issues, albeit possibly in a different domain. Yeah, so just the difference between having a coach and the personal board, I guess. Yeah, I guess the coach I don't really talk to about work stuff. And I guess the personal board is some, a group that I can share what I'm trying to achieve and the challenges I'm facing and just have, you know, like, like super friends that you can bounce, you know, that there's kind of professional thoughts off of. I mean, even this morning, I had a chat with Alan Francis over breakfast and I was telling him that I want to do some stuff with iPhone development. And even telling Alan that I know that next time I see Alan, he's going to ask me, how's that going? Did you read that book? I told you to read. And, you know, even on an informal level that kind of sort of just that amplified and scheduled, I guess. Yeah. Yeah, because actually, that's a big thing. Because, you know, everybody that's successful is busy, busy, busy. So it's kind of everybody committing to make time to schedule out in as well. One point I should have probably mentioned. Well, why am I admitting this now? But I do feel slightly ridiculous given a talk on career advice, given that I've never applied or had a normal job in my life. Pardon. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. So you've also worked with teams. Yeah. But what are your thoughts on, on thoughts on being, you know, coming in and working with teams versus being in a team on a very low basis or something like that? So the question is what are my thoughts on being an independent contractor who joins a team, I guess, for a limited period of time versus being part of that permanently? And it's tricky for me because I've never been like a permanent part of a team, I guess. But it's a pretty good way of testing that out. And I've really enjoyed the last year I've worked more in longer term basis with with these teams. And that's definitely been much more rewarding and satisfying than maybe before just working on shorter term projects. And it's, yeah, definitely, there's, you know, just building up those relationships and power with people. And yeah, sorry, I don't know how to answer that better. Has anybody else done that kind of like a board peer review type of thing? Good. Yeah. We're all nice and early then. Keynote.