What have I learned from this ?

Recently there was a major eSports event held in Krakow, Poland. This reminded me of my early 20’s and the long nights spent in the Internet Cafes or at home, while i was playing Counter-Strike in sessions that lasted for hours, sometimes even days… Back then i was just enjoying the moment with my friends as like any other person for that age, not knowing exactly how that activity might help me. As i said, it was just fun.

However, watching in hindsight i find many similarities between that activity and what i am currently doing for a living. Part of being a NOC Engineer involves working in shifts, sometimes night shifts which if you don’t prepare yourself for can be very rough. Much like in gaming performed at a certain level, you need stamina to deal with this. You need to be able to concentrate for long periods spent in front of a monitor.

Also just like in gaming, working in a NOC involves collaborating with other people, often from other countries, in order to achieve a common goal. You need to adapt to the enviroment, you need to allocate and budget resources, you need short and long term plans, taking into account many possible scenarios.

Training is another important aspect that can be found in both activities. In gaming if you want to perform at a certain level you need to prepare yourself. I’m not talking about just playing large volumes of time to build your reflexes, but to study the game so you can trully master it and overcome your opponent. This also applies in networking as it is an industry constantly evolving and where emerging of new technologies is a common thing.

Reviewing your actions in order to find and eliminate flaws is also a shared activity.

And last but not least, you need discipline to follow directions and the guts to make decisions.

Looking back, my gaming days seem that they helped me.

What triggered me the above analysis ?

I was recently involved at work in a team that performed some new tasks for a customer. Many of us were just observers learning from the most skilled guy in the team. Beyond the work related stuff, the thing that stucked with me and still echoes in my mind is a simple retoric question that the guy asked himself after finishing the tasks: “What have I learned from this ?”. And after addressing it, he reviewed the main aspects learned that day. I found that to be an awesome thing. It’s a small thing, but it has such a big impact.

The moral of this article would be, no matter what it is that you do, even if you enjoy it or not becauuse we are not always fortunate to do what we like, try to learn something from it that can help you later in life. By doing so, you will evolve and eventually end up being able to do what you like. There is no lost time, there are just lessons learned more or less.

gl&hf gg