First off, I hope you are doing well and staying safe during this time of the covid-19 pandemic. I hope your families and friends are safe as well. My prayers goes out to all nurses and doctors that risk their lives in the service of others. Whether you believe COVID is real or not, be nice and kind to people’s choices.

I recently came across a quote that says, “Life keeps throwing me stones. And I keep finding the diamonds…” –Ana Claudia Antunes
When the pandemic first started and we got the order to stay home, one of my initial thoughts was, how do I take advantage of this time and come out from this a better person in every aspect of my life. How do I find the diamonds? I decided to change and develop a few new habits. In this post, I would like to share with you a new habit I decided to pick.

Self-development

I believe in self-development. I believe I have massive potential (we all do) given to me by the creator and I am always striving to reach it. I will never stop striving to be better than I was yesterday. Life is about growing and progressing, therefore, I have decided to change the time I wake up in the morning. I now wake up between 3 and 5 a.m. I used to wake up between 5 and 6 a.m but since my kids are home, I need to be up much earlier before they wake up. My new habit takes discipline and determination. When I get up that early, I say my prayers and read my scriptures, something I’ve always done. I work on my spirituality because I want to be closer to my Heavenly Father who I let guide me in all I do.
I then work on learning REACTjs which I am starting to understand. The company I work for offers Udemy to all employees and I take advantage of that. There’s an excellent course on Udemy called, “Hello React – React Training for JavaScript Beginners” by Rob Merrill. After completing that course, I also completed Bob Ziroll’s course called “Learn React”. These two course are excellent and gave me a solid foundation of REACT. It gave me enough knowledge to learn how to use it with SharePoint. I am also going through Ziroll’s REACT Bootcamp. I have started creating videos on my Youtube channel to show how I use REACT with SharePoint and comparing it with VUE.
As a SharePoint developer, I have SharePoint on the learning list, diving deeper into the technology. I wish to learn the new apps such as powerAutomate and powerApps. I also plan on learning the new SharePoint SPFx framework.

Conclusion

I have chosen to make the best out of this pandemic situation and to learn everything I can to make myself more marketable when this all ends. To get to where I need to be requires discipline and focus. I fall off the wagon once in a while with my new habit but I make sure I get right back on and not forget why I began the journey. Most importantly, I enjoy the journey/process because that’s where all the refining happens and where I find the nuggets of diamonds.

I would appreciate any thoughts you have. What are you learning during this time?

SharePoint Learning in Pandemic SharePoint