E is for Eskwelabs Issue 020 - 3 sets of questions to ask yourself to grow in your career in 2021 📝🌱

In our twentieth issue, we focus on supercharging your career development using reflection questions that will prompt you to explore the wisdom of paradoxes.

Jan 24, 2021

Hello, Francine here! 👋 We're now entering the last stretch of January, and even at this time, people seem to be in a reflective mood. If you've checked the news lately, the year has been off to an eventful start. But amidst all the chaos and noise, we need to find time to be still and pause—balance is important. Speaking of balance, in this issue we will be exploring the wisdom of paradoxes and applying these insights to our personal and professional growth. Today, we're providing you with reflection questions you can ask yourself to supercharge your career development in 2021. 🌱 💪

What's in this newsletter:

3 sets of questions to ask yourself to grow in your career in 2021

🧠 To learn vs. To unlearn
🤔 To go wide vs. To go deep
💭 To do vs. To be

"The list is the origin of culture. It’s part of the history of art and literature. What does culture want? To make infinity comprehensible… And how, as a human being, does one face infinity? How does one attempt to grasp the incomprehensible? Through lists…" —Umberto Eco, Italian novelist and philosopher

In this E is for Eskwelabs newsletter, we hope to explore the beauty in the tension between three pairs of lists (or questions) that may seem to be at war with one another, but are actually harmonious and even complementary. May the reflection prompts below allow you to dig deeper and discover more truths about yourself for your career development this 2021!

📝 3 sets of questions to ask yourself to grow in your career in 2021 🌱

🧠 To learn vs. To unlearn

It's easy to think that if you're a lifelong learner that it's all about continuously adding more things on your to learn list. (In fact, one of our previous issues focuses precisely on the to learn lists of our team members). But it's important to remember that learning is not just done by addition, but also by subtraction. This is true especially for how we view the world, the values that we ascribe to, and the beliefs we have about people and productivity in general. Over time, as we grow older, there will be many lessons we will have to unlearn to make way for the lessons we need to learn. Or, we don't always have to replace one unlearned item by adding something new. Sometimes it's even harder—but incredibly essential—to take away, simplify, or accept that there are beliefs that no longer apply in a world that's constantly shifting. Let's go for a balance, let's be comfortable with learning and unlearning.

✏️ Prompt #1 | What values and ways of thinking are you trying to learn this 2021 and why?
✏️ Prompt #2 | What are the lessons on your “to unlearn” list? How will removing these from your life enable you to move forward with your current learning goals?

📰 Eskwelabs News

Last January 14, we were selected as the winning team of ADB's "Digital Reskilling and Upskilling of the New Workforce" Challenge where over 40+ teams from 20+ countries entered to present a winning innovative solution to bridge the digital skills gap exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. This is the second time we entered an ADB Challenge—we shared the prize with another team the year before—but we were determined to not be complacent. This is one application of learning vs. unlearning. When novelty is no longer present, it's easy to give in to the temptation of resting on our laurels and just banking on what we already know—we may think that "what we already know" would be enough again, right? Wrong. Going into the ADB Challenge for 2021, we approached it with just a fresh an eagerness and determination as when we entered our first ADB Challenge a year ago.

Growth goes both ways, it's in what you learn and unlearn.

🤔 To go wide vs. To go deep

When you stop and think about it, we live in a world that's designed to reward choosing or adding "more." Just finished clicking "Add to cart?" Well, you now have a big "Continue shopping" or "Add more items" button occupying the center of your screen. Want to order food delivery? You're always presented with a list that's pre-made, all you have to do is to tap or click and you get more food. A food delivery app where you have to eliminate the food you don't want to get to your final order is unheard of—such an app doesn't exist! It's not natural for user experience, because when you think about it, humans aren't really used to letting go of opportunities even if they are only possibilities. If such a food delivery app were made, then can you imagine having to order from a fast food chain by pitting hamburgers and pizzas or ice cream and cake against one another? The decision fatigue and choice paralysis would be intense.

So, the question of going wide or going deep is similar to the question of learning or unlearning. But for this question, you push yourself to face where you really need to be putting your time, energy, and focus on. Going into the new year, several Eskwelabs team members had also asked themselves this same question: do we go wide or go deep? We can face this pair of lists in terms of the skills you want to add to your skill set.

✏️ Prompt #1 | Based on what you know and are good at right now, does it make more sense to acquire skills from other fields to make your skill set diverse? Or, would it be better to dig deeper and become a master at the skills you already have?
✏️ Prompt #2 | If you were "to go wide," what skills should you be developing, or if you were to "go deep," what other skills in your specialisation do you need to master?

💼 Eskwelabs Careers

Here's one concrete application of the "go wide vs. go deep" question: becoming a member of Team Eskwelabs! Our team is growing and we are looking for dreamers and doers who are passionate about redesigning digital and data skills education for the future of work. We're hiring for the following positions:

React Developer | UX Designer | Software Engineering Intern | Program mentors | Program instructors

Growth goes both ways, it's going deep and strengthening your roots, and it's going wide and stretching your branches.

💭 To do vs. To be

As the world was forced to still and the pandemic pushed many people to pause, productivity became a popular topic of conversations both online and offline. Questions like "Is it okay to not be productive?" began popping up. Initially, these questions gave a sense of relief, because if there's less pressure for human doing, then there'd be more room for human being. But looking at this line of thinking more closely, it's frightening that we'd even have to ask. Of all the things we should be asking, do we need to ask for permission to just "be?"

It's no surprise that some people would dub Benjamin Franklin as the godfather of to-do lists. When you research and go back to the origin of his famous 13-week plan to develop the 13 virtues, you'll discover that it was actually his character development strategy. He wanted to live out virtues like humility, cleanliness, frugality, and more. He would list the hours in a day and write down what he'd be doing for each set. Our to-do lists today probably wouldn't look much different from Franklin's—this is in terms of structure. But he had a specific intention for his to-do lists: an idea of the kind of person he wanted to be. Each day, he wanted to be a clean and tidy human; someone who examined his day at night; a person who frequently checked his finances; a human who enjoyed reading, listening to music, engaging in conversation; and more.

To-do lists are important, but when paired with your to-be list, they become even more powerful.

✏️ Prompt #1 | Do you know why you are doing what you are doing?
✏️ Prompt #2 | What kind of person do you want to become and why? Now, what actions or tasks support your goal of becoming this person?

💻 Eskwelabs Programs

One clear way of merging the concept of the "to-do" and "to-be" is in pursuing opportunities that will enable you to actualize the person you want to become. Here are learning opportunities from Eskwelabs that we'd like to share with you and encourage you to sign up for:

Data Science Fellowship → Cohort 7 is open for admissions and will start classes in May 2021!

Data Analytics Bootcamp → Cohort 1 will start classes tomorrow (January 25), admissions for Cohort 2 are now open!

Aral-Aral+ → Learn Python, Math, and Statistics for data science at your own pace with 14 code-along Jupyter Notebooks and 70+ walkthrough videos in this on-demand prep-course. By the way, here's a 25% OFF discount exclusive for newsletter subscribers. Apply "aOA50l" when you checkout. 😍

Growth is amplified when you are mindful of what you are doing and why you are doing it.

E is for Eskwelabs