#3 – “Courage to start, brave enough to stop”

Sometimes fear holds us from starting something new and taking new steps or decisions in our lives.
Usually, this fear is related to the failure.

We design plans focusing only on the happy flow of the scenarios – if we are dreaming, seems not to be a good idea to put some pinches of a nightmare on the recipe, right?

And that’s my point: all experiences and situations bring some nice and learning aspects.
Every. Trust me.

All this introductory part to share with you another two steps in my journey and what I’ve learned with them:

• First, a few months ago I started my master’s degree in Data Analytics at FEUP, which is one of the best-rated masters in the area!
  
  Incredible news, right? I always like to mention it: Lucky Augusto!
  

• And the second and hardest one… There are a few reasons behind like a high degree of theoretical stuff, old fashioned way of evaluating someone’s performance by tests at the end of the semester, and a high time spent with classes almost every day and to work on the exercises.
  
  This last aspect was the most impacting on my work-life balance. I was spending on average 14 workings and studying hours every weekday and not having time to spend with my family/friends and doing things that make me happy!

It was frustrating me and making me start my days without the usual energy and good vibe that I like to keep on.

So, after spending some days thinking about all the changes that I had just put into my daily routine together with the pros and cons, I had also to take the difficult decision of quitting the master that I just mentioned.

It was not easy, but it was not making me feel good, not even motivated or engaged.

And was hard for me to take this decision because, in my plan, I was supposed to start and conclude the master – the quit word was not in the dictionary of that plan – and I spent some time trying to digest that the most important in all of it was to experiment. To try one master’s degree. To see what was going to be a routine with full-time work and an ongoing master’s degree.

And that’s what I wanted to highlight in this story: create plans, take risks, challenge yourself, and do not be afraid of failures – even when things don’t go very well, there will be some learnings and lessons to keep moving forward.

“You live, you learn!” and seems that we have just talked about a little PDCA (plan, do (execute them), check (analyze the progress and the results), adapt) cycle, right?!

But, look, this is me again… starting to talk about lean or agile principles and tools, and today’s focus should not be it.

Today I just wanted to talk about how we need to be brave to take new steps in life.

Some to start. Some to stop.