In this year, I focus on writing more and more articles on this blog. In particular, I write an article every week; 52 articles should be published until the end of 2017. Each post probably describes what I have created, read, and experienced in a week. Note that the articles will be written both in Japanese and English depending on the contents.

Most importantly, taking full advantaged of a personal publishing tool is one of the best ways to enrich the quality and quantity of your portfolio. Since we cannot write anything without a certain result, learning and creating something (e.g., writing code, reading books, taking online courses) should be essential to write 52 articles. Your portfolio is definitely matured by the efforts made by yourself.

OK, I personally like to enhance my portfolio for the following reasons.

First of all, my career as a professional engineer starts from this April after graduation from the master's course. In fact, I have enjoyed programming and engaged in computer science for more than 5 years, but everything what I have experienced before was recognized as student's results. In contrast to the students' immature results, recognition for professional work is strict; I cannot be distinguished unless I demonstrate my skills in some way. Hence, I expect this blog to be a certificate of my professional skills.

Moreover, working (i.e., learning and creating) hard is a necessary step toward my career goal. I am actually going to work in Tokyo, Japan from this April, but my ultimate goal is to independently work and live in the foreign countries; a purpose in my life is in traveling and seeing the world! Therefore, as the first step, improving my skills with a lot of achievements is really important to be a mature professional engineer. Writing an article every week is a way to continuously enhance the skills throughout the year.

In addition to writing the 52 articles, I have several sub-goals which look like driving force behind the main goal. These can be stated as numerical goals as follows:

• 12 books
  • Read at least 1 book in a month.
  • Count a novel as 0.5 book; 2 novels = 1 book.
• 4 online courses
  • Single course generally takes 2-3 months.
  • Always to be taking at least 1 online course.
• 4 presentations
  • Make presentation at least once per 3 months.
  • Must be done outside of the university and company.
  • Lightning talks are okay.
• 365 GitHub commits
  • Write code (nearly) every day!
  • Very tiny commits (e.g., updating README) are acceptable in my case.
  • If it is impossible, a reason must be reasonable.

Note: Making a nest egg for later inaction is unacceptable; even if I read 2 books in a month, I should read at least 1 book in the later months.

Some of the articles might be progress reports of the above sub-goals, and otherwise the posts could depict something impressive in my daily life. Anyway, I certainly believe that a lot of knowledge from books and courses makes the products (i.e., presentation and code) better.

That's all of the first post in 2017, and I am highly excited about writing remaining 51 articles!

  Share

Tweet

  Categories

Life & Work

  See also

2022-01-23

The Producer-Consumer Gap

2021-12-26

My 2021 Annual Review: A Year of Divergence (And Slowly Started Converging)

2014-11-09

Hello English Entries

  More

Last updated: 2022-09-02

  Author: Takuya Kitazawa

Takuya Kitazawa is a freelance software developer based in British Columbia, Canada. As a technologist specializing in AI and data-driven solutions, he has worked globally at Big Tech and start-up companies for a decade. At the intersection of tech and society, he is passionate about promoting the ethical use of information technologies through his mentoring, business consultation, and public engagement activities. See CV for more information, or contact at [email protected].

  Now   Gift a cup of coffee

  Disclaimer

• Opinions are my own and do not represent the views of organizations I am/was belonging to.
• I am doing my best to ensure the accuracy and fair use of the information. However, there might be some errors, outdated information, or biased subjective statements because the main purpose of this blog is to jot down my personal thoughts as soon as possible before conducting an extensive investigation. Visitors understand the limitations and rely on any information at their own risk.
• That said, if there is any issue with the content, please contact me so I can take the necessary action.