In order to celebrate the 100th episode of the Software developer's Journey podcast, Amitai Schleier took over the show and put me in the hot seat. It's hard to list my own takeaways, but I took a few things out of the discussion:

  • I had forgotten that I spend time playing Lucas-Arts point-and-click games when I was 10-ish. Those games were in English only, and I had to play with a dictionary on my lap (I grew up in France) to decipher what was going on. This is how I started to learn English.
  • When asked what were the biggest learnings for me as a host, I answered "deep listening" and "creating without expecting anything in return". Deep listening, not to answer, but t o truly be here in the moment is a crucial skill. This is one of my coaching tools, a tool that serves daily. I believe this is also mandatory to run a freestyle show like I do. The "ego-less" part is something I have been doing for years. Do something because it inherently feels good. It feels good to listen to all those stories and be inspired. It feels good to think that I might be helping others. If feels good to use my privileges to help others. And if/when somethings comes my way as a result, even better, but that's never the starting point. We also dwelled on success metrics, and I was happy to be able to put it out there: the only metric I have is "am I having fun?"
  • When Amitai asked what my superpower is, I spoke about being able to lead and be followed. I still don't know how and why this happens, but it tends to happen. I am somehow able to lead people through fire, convince them to follow me there. It still bugs me that I cannot understand how that works...

Advice:

  • You are at the steering wheel of your own life, don't let life happen by default!

Thanks Amitai for hosting this show!

You can find the full episode and the shownotes on devjourney.info.

Did you listen to my story?

  • What did you learn?
  • What are your personal takeaways?
  • What did you find particularly interesting?