That other person next to you. Don't worry about them.

It was a weekday evening and I was at the gym. Friends of mine today know that I love pumping a little iron. I know it's a bit dorky, but I am after all a tech worker 🙂. This was a long time ago, before I really even knew anything about lifting weights or what I was even doing at the gym. It was actually before I had even thought about working seriously in technology. But boy, I can tell you I was real serious about pumping iron.

When you go into the weight room for the first time, or maybe better – the first time when you actually have some personal fitness goals that you've targeted, it feels pretty exciting. It's easy to feel that you have no place to go but up, and to an extent it really is true. On this particular evening I had finished work, and walked the few blocks to my local gym. No lie, there were a lot of hefty folks in there, people that really knew what they were doing. To a newcomer it can feel intimidating. I sat down at the bench, where right over from me was another person on a different bench. They were in the process of putting some weights on their bar. Then, no surprise, they started to lift. They were making some noises I was unfamilar with. They were chugging along. Heaving and hefting these weights up and down.

I started off lifting some small amount of weight on the barbell that I felt was manageable. Very soon however, I felt like, because of the cadence and effort of the person on the bench next to me I had to step it up. I felt like I had to prove something to them, perhaps prove that I was in their league – that maybe we were somehow in competition with each other. I put more weight on the bar, and before I knew it I quickly injured myself. In fact, I needed help from others at the gym to lift the bar off of me. It was too heavy for me to lift.

It sounds like a classic rookie mistake, and it was. Yes, indeed it was. This is a mistake I see outside of the weightroom all the time, but the imagery is not so vivid and the meaning not so simple to glean. As software / web / front end / ect developers it's very easy to start comparing ourselves to others. I'm here to tell you, even in software development skill sets vary widely. Play to your strengths, practice where you are deficient, and hone your abilities so that you can tailor yourself into the role you desire.