Evaluating myself
How should I be evaluating myself?
The only metric that matters is the delta between what you know and what you need to know to build what you have to build. How do you find out what this is? By building that which must be built. When you get stuck, you will have to find a way to get unstuck: by getting educated, by consulting others, by finding others’ solutions, or just by old fashioned figuring it out.
How often?
Continuously.
How should I decide what to work on?
Work on what needs to be worked on, not what you need to get better at. Any other approach would be backwards.
By definition, the “Competency Matrix” you cite is a bad goal. Every entry has different level of importance for every person and every situation. By trying to aspire to this flawed ideal, you will be wasting time on things that aren’t important and missing things that are.
(Aside: When I reviewed the Competency Matrix, I had to laugh. Many of the items were so important that you couldn’t help getting better at them just by building lots of stuff. And many will never be important at all.)
The best way to get good at what you should be getting good at is to build what needs to be built. Then trust the process and yourself to fill in the gaps.
Does my ability relative to others matter?
No! There will always be many people better than you. There will always be many people worse than you. You will probably be the best at something (or some combination of skills). You will probably never get very good at something (or some combination of skills). And you know what? It doesn’t matter!
All that matters is whether or not you can successfully build that which must be built. The ability to figure out what that is and how to do that is the most important skill of all.
Moral of the story: Go find out what people need. Then build it. The more you become concerned with their needs and the less about your own, the sooner you’ll take care of both.
Source & Credits : I forgot from where i got this, but it was in my Google Keep for a long time!
