Ep 61 | Curriculum Design
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ZubinVoice: [00:00:00] Hey guys, welcome back to Easier Said than Done. I wanted to tell you about the time when I was changing careers. I was, a 37 lawyer and I was trying to become a coder and it was really hard and I wasted so many months. Actually, I wasted about five years all up. Not continuously, but about five years in total.
Just following random YouTube tutorials, online blogs,
a bunch of free tutorials and code academy and all of that stuff, right? And I realized that I needed an actual plan, which I didn't have a plan.
So in episode 56, I think I talked about what I learned about good goal setting for learning to code. So go and check that episode out. But it was in that process that I realized that seven stages to career change,
and I only figured this out because I've been on the hiring side for a long enough time to see that it looks completely different.
Most people who are giving you advice on how to become a professional coder are giving you advice on how to improve yourself as a candidate, but they don't complete the missing piece, which is what do hiring managers need to see?
Because you can improve yourself endlessly as a candidate, and often the best candidates on paper don't get the job.
So why?
INTRO
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Welcome to Easier Said Than Done with me, Zubin Pratap, [00:01:00] where I share with you my journey from 37 year old lawyer to professional software engineer.
ZubinVoice: you can improve yourself endlessly as a candidate, and often the best candidates on paper don't get the job.
So why?
It's because the hiring managers have certain requirements that they're not seeing.
so. There are seven stages to career change, and in this series of videos in, in this episodes and podcasts, I'm going to be talking about
the seven different Stages, giving a deep dive on each one, because this is kind of what I take my students in the Inner Circle program through very systematically over 12 months.
But today we're gonna talk about designing your own customized curriculum that's right for you.
Now, this is something that I do for my students and the mentees in the Inner Circle program, but I'm gonna break down to you how you should actually analyze the process and know what to do.
Okay? Because most aspiring coders that come to me, certainly that I've met, and I met maybe over 2000 in the last five years
as part of my work and things like that. Most of them have been learning for six plus months, often 12 plus months, done bootcamps,
et cetera, but they still cannot build anything useful.
And it's not that they're not smart enough, so let's [00:02:00] just park that idea completely to one side.
It's not a, it's not an issue, okay? If you're watching this video and you can read and write, you're probably smart enough to at least learn to code, but that's not gonna be enough. And maybe this is you.
Maybe you are the person that's done all these courses and bounced between all these two roles, and you chase the latest trending frameworks and you're overwhelmed and tired and fatigued
pissed off at all the conflicted advice you're getting.
resume here
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ZubinVoice: And now let's assume you're also a career changer. Let's assume you're like most of my students with existing jobs, families, not enough time, and you're trying to learn to code in this kind of environment when time is your shortest, most scarce resource right now, this is a serious problem because
you've got little time, which means you've got very little time to get this right, which means you've got no time to waste, no time to waste. But here's what's actually happening. Maybe you've been building what I would call a pinata career, right?
You kind of blindfolded and
you're trying to strike at the donkey as best you can.
You're swinging at whatever shows up in your feed
and some algorithm suggests rather than you actually knowing what [00:03:00] to do next, and you're kind of playing the guessing game a bit. Okay? So that's what we're gonna talk about in the episode now. I'm gonna break this down into several parts. So part one's gonna be about, well, why most career changes fail before they even begin.
Okay? The fundamental problem, and I want you guys to just burn this into your minds and memories, okay?
Direction matters more important than speed. In other words, it doesn't matter how many hours you do, it doesn't matter how hard you work.
It doesn't matter how many tutorials you finish. It doesn't matter how many frameworks and languages you acquire.
It doesn't matter what your metrics in your GI up says. All those fancy things, which by the way, only newbies put on their GitHub. No experience engineer ever puts those metrics like that on their GitHub. Right? So all those things don't matter if you're going the wrong direction, it's just basic common sense, okay?
Unfortunately, most people do this because they jump straight into the learning without a proper roadmap, right? In other words, like I tell my students all the time,
everyone's so interested about skydiving that they're just dying to get on the plane and jump off it. And nobody thinks about packing the parachute.
But that's the most important part.
Now, the problem [00:04:00] with letting the algorithms decide what you're going to learn is that you actually end up doing what is put in front of you.
It's almost like the first thing that you can put your hand around is the thing you learn regardless of whether it's right or wrong.
Makes sense. Useful, directionally correct. Regardless of any of that.
I want you to imagine the scenario, okay? You wanna make pizza, you open your pantry, you reach in there and you see there's only rice and beans.
Does that mean you're gonna make pizza now? No, it's the wrong ingredients. The fact that it's very convenient in right. The pantry has zero relevance to your goal.
It does not mean you should try and make pizza with rice and beans because whenever you grab whatever resources are available, that's actually a recipe for failure. You have to grab the resources, the ingredients, that make sense to the thing you're trying to do. Okay, now let's, let's have a reality check for a moment.
Who do you think your competition, if you are a busy career changer, trying to learn to code, and you've got, maybe family and kids and other things, and maybe you don't have kids, you just got a busy job.
You think your competition's [00:05:00] like you, right? Wrong. Your competition is not a career changer.
Your competition is probably a computer science graduate, or at least an experienced developer who doesn't have the same time constraints you do.
CTA
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ZubinVoice: You think your competition's like you, right? Wrong. Your competition is not a career changer.
Your competition is probably a computer science graduate,
Why? Because they're already on the job. So they're doing this eight hours a day, five, six days a week, and you are struggling to do two hours a day if that.
Your competition is totally different from you, which is also why it doesn't matter how much you learn in that period in your, in your couple of hours a day, because you're probably gonna be doing the wrong thing while the competition is doing the thing that hiring manager really looks for. Okay? So let's talk about part two.
Part two is what I call kind of the Google Maps approach to designing your curriculum, right? And I want you to get these concepts in your head because as soon as you get these concepts, then you will understand how to build your own curriculum and how to change it. As in when the market changes or as in when your goals clarify because sometimes your goals will be a little bit fuzzy at at the start, and then it gets clearer and closer.
[00:07:00] Get closer, just like anything else. Okay? But I want you to think about it in this way. When you put your destination and Google Maps, right? You're trying to navigate, you need two pieces of data. You need the destination address for sure. But your phone also uses the GPS to decide your starting point. So you actually need two pieces of data.
If you turn your GPS off, your phone won't be able to navigate you to the destination. It'll tell you we don't know your starting point. Now, this is the problem with all the blogs and all the courses out there that are so cheap and so easy for you to buy, is that they don't know where your starting from.
Okay? And I've said this a million times on my, on my channel. London is not north for everybody. It is south for a very large number of people. It is east for a large number of people. It's west for a large number of people. It's Southwest for some, it's not north for everybody, even though it feels like it's up there north on the map.
If somebody doesn't know your starting point, any advice they give you is probably too generic to be useful. Okay. And
it's impossible to design a curriculum without these two points. A clear sense of your destination and a clear sense of your starting [00:08:00] point.
Which is why that previous video that I talked about, episode 56 is the one you should start with because that helps you fix the destination.
'cause it's all about the right kind of goal setting. And I, I've almost never met anyone who has any concept about proper goal settings. Like, so go watch that video. Okay. Right now, if you're feeling trapped, even though you've done all these courses and you spent months and weeks and months and weeks, right, it's because you've been driving without a destination, which makes sense.
If you are driving and you're not sure where you're going, you are going to feel trapped and lost and frustrated. It's only normal, right? Or worse, maybe You're overwhelmed by all the information, and the reason you are listening to all this information or putting any attention at all on all this information is because you are not clear.
And because you are not clear on what information you need to ignore, in a world where information is free, there's going to be a lot of crap, a lot of sewage, which means you need really strong filters in your brain, which means you need to be crystal clear on. Everything that is to be ignored. 'cause there's too much information for you to take on.
That's why it's overwhelming. The moment you get clear on your [00:09:00] goals, you can just ignore everything else. For example, if you've ever been in a situation where you've wanted one particular, I don't know, it could be an ice cream, it could be a date, it could be anything you've decided, Hey, I'm locking in on this one thing, the target.
You ignore everything else, right? You have to ignore everything else. Everything else on the radar just gets tuned out and you lock into the one target. That's the level of specificity and clarity you need when you're goal setting. And if you don't have it, you're gonna feel trapped and you're gonna be all over the place.
So here are some frameworks that I use when I'm training my mentees in the Inner Circle program, right? So this brings us to part three. The first framework is the minimum effective dose framework. Now I call it the MED, the minimum effective dose, which is the concept that, unlike what most blogs tell you.
Unlike what most teachers will tell you, you don't want to learn as much as you can. Okay? Most blogs are basically click bait. They, they calculate it to make you click on them so that you know they can get your eyeballs and give you advertising, whatever it is, right? Fine, that's fine. There's a, there's a place in the, in the world for all that, but [00:10:00] anytime you see a blog, like Five Big Languages with 2025, the most important language in 2026 or.
Whatever it's, the kind of blogs I'm talking about, right? Anytime you see that, tune it out. Okay? Because they're trying to get you to learn more. Your goal should be the minimum effective dose, not the maximum number of things you can do, especially if you're a time per person with a full-time job and a family and you're trying to make the career change.
Do not do go for the maximum. It's not gonna help you anywhere. You need the MED, the minimum effective dose, which means you'll get the optimal results with a minimum amount of time investment,
which is an extremely ruthless thing. In other words. In other words, that's actually just another word for being efficient.
Efficiency is when you get
the maximum output for the minimum input of energy and effort or fuel.
So that's what you want, the MED, because that's the most efficient way. Now, why this is critical for career changes is because you guys have limited time. You probably have family current job, you talked about all that, right?
So you, you just don't have much time. So if you don't have much fuel, you want to get the maximum work outta that fuel available. Now, the unfortunate truth is. People try to [00:11:00] learn everything because they feel insecure about what they do know, and so they feel they need to compensate for that by learning more and more, and that's the opposite of being efficient.
And so you end up feeling overwhelmed, burnt out, frustrated, lost, not knowing anything well enough to build anything, all of these common symptoms, or feeling like you're really struggled to managing your time. It's not that managing time is really important, but with limited time, you can still get amazing results.
Lots of all my students do, I did. And that's only because you have to know how to be efficient with that time, which means you have to know what the minimum effective dose needs to be. So that's one of the frameworks.
Alright, now onto part four.
The next framework is what I call
the Necessary Sufficient and Useful framework. NSU.
Now this is something I learned in the law and I directly applied it to career change four times now. Okay? It works every time. So here's what the NSU framework's all about.
There is a difference between something that is necessary and something that is sufficient. We'll get to you later on. Okay? Necessary is you have to do it. In order to get the result, but it's not the only thing you have to [00:12:00] do, it's just one of the steps. So, so for pizza, let's say, you, you're making a regular pi pizza with dough, you kind of need the dough.
You can't make a pizza with just a bottle and cheese. Right? Even though those are necessary too, depending on the kinds of kind of, pizza you're making. Okay. So for pizza. Absolutely dough is necessary. And you could argue regardless of the ingredients, certain tools are necessary. Absolutely. An oven is necessary.
You need a source of heat necessary to bake a pizza, okay? That's necessary. Sufficient is a list of necessary things. It's never just one thing. It's never enough to just have the dough. It's never enough to just have the oven. You need a list of things necessary to get the gold. Okay, so in the case of pizza exam, I'm gonna keep using this example so you guys can understand it.
If you're making just a simple margarita pizza, you're probably gonna get by just fine with salted dough tomato, a little bit of cheese, and maybe some basil or something on top. Okay. But really with just three things with dough, tomato, a base, and and some cheese. You'll have a simple margarita pizza that's actually [00:13:00] sufficient to make a minimal level pizza.
Of course, if you have more ingredients to that, even better. And that brings me to useful. The third category of things useful is everything else that's not necessary. But would add to the sufficiency. Okay. So it, and it may not even be sufficient, like it's definitely something that's useful is not sufficient.
So for example having pineapple on your pizza could be useful if you like it, but it's neither necessary nor sufficient. Okay? Unfortunately, most people fall under the trap or spending pretty much a hundred percent of that time on useful things. Actually, maybe I exaggerate. Maybe it's 80% not a hundred percent of the time.
And useful things 20% of the time will get spent on things that are necessary, but they never know what combination of things is sufficient, right? So they spend all their time on useful things or some of the necessary things, but not enough time on the necessary things to get good enough to understand what becomes sufficient.
Now just think about that for a moment, because there's quite a lot to think about there. But here's the, here's the key principle. You cannot judge. What is [00:14:00] necessary or sufficient or useful without being a hundred percent clear on your goal, which means the most important thing continues to be stage one.
We are not talking about stage two in this video, right? We're talking about how you design your own curriculum, which is stage two. Stage one is really crystal clear goal setting. You cannot decide what's necessary, sufficient or useful without being crystal clear on your goal. Example, if I want to make a Hawaiian pizza with mushrooms.
Two things become necessary. Not sufficient, necessary mushrooms and pineapple. Okay? You'd argue that absolutely you need dough. So three things are not necessary. Okay? Yes, you need cheese. Four things are now necessary, but perhaps without a tomato base. It's not sufficient. And if you're making a Hawaiian pizza, if you had just the tomato, the, the pizza base, some cheese, and even if you had the mushrooms, it's not quite a Hawaiian pizza without the without the pineapple.
And therefore it's not sufficient without pineapple. You see what I'm [00:15:00] saying here? The combination of the right number of necessary and useful things will be sufficient, but you can only assess this when you know that your goal is Hawaiian pizza. Not the case for a tuna pizza or an anchovy pizza for an anchovy pizza.
Anchovies are necessary but not sufficient. They're more than useful. They're necessary. Okay. You could argue that mushrooms are useful, but not necessary and not sufficient for an anchovy pizza. I hope you're really getting this example. I know I'm straining the pizza metaphor a bit here, but it's really important that you understand too.
How to analyze things as necessary sufficiently useful. Your goal when doing the MED, remember the previous framework you talked about just about five minutes ago? Your goal in identifying the minimum effective dose is to identify all the necessary things, but the minimum number such that. When combined in the correct order, you get to sufficiency, you get it to be sufficient, and you want to ignore anything that's useful.
Only but's not necessary, and it certainly in combination with other things [00:16:00] is not gonna be sufficient. That's your goal. So now you understand how the MED framework ties into the NSU framework, but I just said something that's quite important to be able to ruthlessly. Eliminate all these things and then combine them in the right sequence.
So to combine the necessary things in the right sequence, such that it becomes sufficient, requires you to understand the sequence, okay? And you have to learn to do this, to apply to any given course tutorial, resource, mentorship, whatever it is, okay? The reason why do the Inner Circle program is I spend 12 months.
With my students, of which the first two to three months, that's a lot of time guys. That's a lot of time is just identifying. Starting point, ending point. And you'd be surprised how. Unpracticed people are at fixing their goals, okay? Takes a bit of work, and then you have to identify all the things between a starting and ending that are obstacles to you.
It could be time, it could be your own mindset. It could be your own learning habits. It could be your own, your current job situation. It could be your family situation. Maybe you've got kids that are particularly, higher [00:17:00] needs and stuff like that. All these things you need to identify between your starting point and the ending point.
What's all the bad weather that you're gonna encounter? And you need to put a plan into place so that you also need to understand how much time you have. And most importantly, we need to figure out for that given goal, what's the necessary sequence of things such that it becomes sufficient. And that's how I build my students' customized coding curriculum.
This is why every student gets a different coding program. 'cause it's not just about the code, it's about life management as well. Okay. Now to combine the things that are necessary in sufficient quantities and in the right order means that sequence matters. And that's part five. We need to think about the sequence like a recipe.
Okay, so sorry, but I'm not done with the pizza analogy yet.
The right ingredients in the wrong order will lead to failure.
If you try to put the pizza in the oven without the cheese and then sprinkle cheese on right at the end, after everything else, it's not gonna be much of a pizza.
All the fun's gone, okay?
It's not gonna be a great pizza, okay?
This is why, just because you have the right combination of coding courses does not [00:18:00] mean that you're going to combine it in the right order and get the results you want. It's
the sequence is really important.
Take any recipe, mix around the sequence and you'll see it doesn't work.
Now common sequencing mistakes for beginners. For example, the most common one I see is people
jump into advanced topics before fundamental,
Hey, I did the same thing. I didn't even know the basics of HTML and CS S. They're not programming languages, but stick with me for a moment.
Okay? I didn't even know the basics of that. I didn't even know enough to know that HTML and CS S are not programming languages, I try to dive straight into Android development. Now, Android development requires Java, which is a typed language, which is one level higher than or more complicated than, than un typed languages like Js and and Python.
So it's Java. And it's a framework and it's a very specific type of device. Okay. I had no idea to know that I was that super, super advanced for where, for a complete beginner like me. And I made this mistake for two years. Okay? That's why I quit repeatedly for two years and then I ended up quitting [00:19:00] for another two years when I tried to get into gender programming.
But it's 'cause I didn't have all this material in front of me, right? Okay. So beginners make this mistake log now for intermediates learning new things rather than getting professional grade skills. That's how I would describe the biggest problem that intermediates have is that they feel, well, I know a little bit, I've understood some syntax.
I know how to do a simple CRUD app, right? I know how to build a simple API, but the world is not simple APIs. There is no way you build a sophisticated product in 20 25, 20 26 using simple APIs. Everything is way more complex than even begin to understand when you're starting out. It's like saying. I know how to spell BAT bat, CAT Cat, DOG dog.
I know how to put it all in a sentence, therefore I'm now an author. No, that's not the way the publishing industry works. You know nothing about the publishing industry. You barely know how to compose a decent essay, but because you know some syntax and you're spelling, you think you know it. Big mistake.
Now for intermediates. The bad habit is that you try and learn new things. Just when you started to get [00:20:00] comfortable with the things you've started
learning and you started to get a bit of proficiency, right? You start getting excited and you think you want to jump into new topics because that's what some blog tell you.
Do not do this. Your goal is to not just be proficient at something or start learning the basics. Your goal is to get to professional grade skills. Here, guys, you're not a hobbyist. You're trying to get hired.
You are trying to be in the labor marketplace. You're trying to compete to get paid for something, which means you can't be a hobbyist. You need to be professional grade, which means you can't jump around too much. You need to stick to the few things and get professional level at them.
Right now, in future videos, I talk about stage three and then stage four.
Stage three is learning the fundamentals. Stage four is getting to professional grade skills, so you know, you, you should tune into those ones when they come out. But let me just say that this is the common mistake intermediates made. They often learn the fundamentals and they completely forget about stage four, which is getting to professional grade at the few things that matter.
Okay? Now, why is this sequence important? Think about it. If you try to key teach a kid calculus before they learn arithmetic, they're gonna fail. They both math. [00:21:00] They're both math, but if you try to teach them calculus before arithmetic, they're gonna fail. Similarly, you can put all the ingredients into the pizza all the wrong way around, do the heat at the early time, or you can just put the pizza in with nothing on top of it, no tomato, no cheese, and heat it up.
And then try and put the tomato and cheese and heat it up again. You're gonna screw it up. Okay. Sequence matters, and also knowing which stage you're at really, really matters. Knowing what to do to deepen your skills, knowing what professional grade looks like in your target market is critical. Now, why do I say target market?
Well, for that, please go back and watch episode 56 where I talk about goal setting in the context of your target market, because there are no two markets that are the. Okay. The San Francisco market, when I was applying for Google and when I got in, was a completely different competitive landscape from any other market I've competed in.
Okay? Even Toronto and Vancouver, same country, vastly different markets, okay? Bangalore and Delhi, same country, vastly different markets. Melbourne and Los Angeles, different countries, hugely different markets. Okay? The target market really, [00:22:00] really matters, and you have to know how to analyze that. Now, not much longer, but here's part six, okay?
Once you understand how to design your curriculum, now you also need to design your life to build commitment and focus. And people ignore this all the time. They just think, oh, if I have the resource, it'll all fall. No, it doesn't matter guys. There's no special brand of coding language, okay? It's not like bin's teaching a special type of Python or.
Java Golan, that doesn't exist outside in the world. No. Golan is Golan, no matter who teaches it to you, just like English is English, regardless of which textbook you learn it from. Okay? But what trips up most people that I've seen is the inability to stay a carnival over a long enough period of time.
The inability to have the confidence in their judgment, impulse or syndrome, mindset issues, lifestyle issues, time management problem, et cetera, which means you have to build a plan along with your coding plan. To make sure your commitment and focus are really tight. Now, I obviously do this for my students in the, in the Inner Circle program.
We do extensive time auditing, attention auditing and stuff like that. We have all these techniques and process in place, and I can't really cover them all in a [00:23:00] short video, obviously, right? It takes me 12 months to take my students rich, so. Let me just say the, the key principles of this, you have to have the power to say no to distractions, especially YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, blogs, endless free courses, et cetera.
Jumping between resources is killing your progress. It's like you're driving from New York to LA and every a hundred miles, you change your mind and take another turn.
You're never gonna get there. Okay. Once you decide, stick to the plan. Now, I understand that jumping between resources is very tempting in the world of infinite information, which is why I talked about in, in a previous part of this video, how important it is.
Tune out the noise, you, you have to filter it out. And the only way to do that is. Correct. Episode number 56, goal setting. Once you have the goal setting clarity, it's easier to filter things out. Okay. But I also get that you are psychological beings, just like all of us. It's human to feel FOMO and shiny object syndrome.
Right? So you need to account for your own psychological frailty, your own psychological weaknesses. 'cause we all share it. It's a human thing. It's not you. You're not unique. You're not special in having [00:24:00] this problem. We all do. Okay. I had it for years. So what's the trick to quit? FOMO and shiny object syndrome?
How do you build discipline and stick with your program? Well, quite simply, it comes down to this.
Do not stop what you've started. Let me put it another way. If you're going to start something, see it through. Let me put it another way. Do not start something new until you finish completely the one before and do not rush through it.
Spend the time. Actively learning. Yes, it's gonna challenge your sense of patience. Yes, it's gonna be frustrating. Yes, you're gonna feel fomo, that's necessary. You're going to feel fomo. Anytime you commit to something, you commit to a human being, you're gonna feel fomo. You commit to a city, you're gonna feel fomo.
You commit to a car, you're gonna wander all the other cars you could have bought. You commit to a job. I promise you, this problem goes on endlessly in life. Okay? You, you get your perfect job. And then you, a lot of my students go through this, right? Because they'll have multiple offers and then they'll be like.
Oh, but should I be taking this? Should I be taking that? And they forget their goal and they're like, what was your goal? [00:25:00] Once you're clear on your goal, it's easy to discard all the other options that seem attractive but aren't taking you closer to your goal. Okay? That takes discipline. This is why I spent 12 months with mass you building that discipline.
But I'm trying to share all these tips and techniques with you here. Okay? Now. Let's put all this together. Okay, in this part seven. Let's put all of this together. Let's talk about how to design your curriculum. By the way, I do cover a lot of these topics in my lifesaver course, which is on match fit mastery.com.
It's a super cheap course, like 40 or 50 bucks or something, and it's four hours long and it takes you through all the stuff. It's actually called the Before you Learn to Code course. Some students call it the the lifesaver course. So I just let that name stick 'cause it's. Kind of sounds cool. But really it's about what you should do before you learn to code because people dive into the coding bit, right?
We talked about that. We don't want to do that. We wanna have a proper plan because there's no point jumping outta the airplane excited about skydiving without having packed your parachute. Okay? So that cost is about four hours long. Like I said, it's cheap. Check it out at matchfitmastery.com. And I'll also include links at the bottom of this video.
And in fact, most of my videos, that'll give you a free preview to the 12 Month Inner Circle [00:26:00] program as well. Take a look at it and you'll see some of these concepts coming up and how much time you spend in it, okay? Right. Getting back to how to design your curriculum from scratch, the key questions you gotta ask yourself is goal setting.
What job do I want? Right? Two, how to design it. What is the MED to get there? That may take some research. You can use AI tools, but keep in mind, AI tools are tuned and programmed to be highly agreeable. So the best way to test this is to tell the AI to give you some feedback, and then. Just criticize it and say, no, that's absolutely wrong feedback.
Even though you just asked for it. Just criticize and say, that's wrong feedback. Watch it. Change its tune. Okay. They're tuned to be highly agreeable, so. I am a bit skeptical about AI for this kinda stuff. 'cause it doesn't know you, right? It's just trying to guess at what you want hear. So you had to figure out what the ED is to get there, and part of that is being really close.
Clear on your goal, and then literally saying, okay, what are the things that I see, right? When I do some research and job descriptions and stuff. What are the common things? Okay. Typically what you want to do is you want to look at the top. Three or four skills listed in all the kinds of jobs that you [00:27:00] want to do.
Now I show my students how to do this, 'cause we spent a few weeks on this, but the short version is this. You look up, five or 10 or 15, whatever job descriptions in your target market, and then your goal is to try and eliminate as many of the requirements as possible. Okay? 'cause we are looking for the MED, the minimum.
So you wanna eliminate as many as you can, and you do that by saying, okay, from what I'm seeing here in this laundry list that they've got here. Across all these 10 or 15 roles that I'm seeing in the market at the moment, what are the top three or four that recur across all of them? Okay. Or at least across 80% of them.
You wanna use some sort of rough stats around this. Okay. And then you have your MED. That's it. You ignore everything else. It doesn't matter the job description. Say 'cause job descriptions are notorious for having laundry lists of all the things they'd want.
Okay? Don't worry about it. Your, your goal here is to get professional grade skills at the absolute core, two or three skills, okay? That's it. And that's the MED okay? And you wanna spend your limited time as a career changer as a.
Busy person. You wanna spend the least amount of time that you've got. Or rather, you wanna spend all the time that you do have, which is not a lot on doing exactly the right things in the [00:28:00] right way. Now, once you get the MED, then you are the, the, the next question to ask is, well, what's the right sequence?
And to answer that question, you need to know your starting point. So how much do you know? How much do you understand? Sometimes it's not clear. And without my guidance or the guidance of a coach, you won't be able to know this. Off the bat, you may need to do small experiments. What do I mean by small experiments?
You can take any one of your free courses that I'm sure you already have. Right. Do it again and find at which point in time it started getting hard for you. That's kind of roughly your starting point, and then you just wanna get really good at that, and then you wanna move to the next level and then get really good at that.
But that's your starting point broadly. Okay. It's not always accurate. And I spent some time on my students to, to identify this in, a hundred different ways, but. That's basically the principle is at what point does your understanding start to break down? Does your confidence start to break down?
Are you starting to struggle? Is getting uphill? That's roughly a starting point. Typically takes a bit of experience to know, okay, in the programming world, what does that start starting point mean? Because it may be a language thing, it may be a framework thing. Who knows what it's right. And then you've got MED, you've got your [00:29:00] starting point.
And now I want you to ruthlessly analyze for every next decision you finished. One thing, remember, do not. Start something new until leave, finish the thing you're already on. If it's too hard, fine, you can stop that. But then you have to start something else that's a couple of levels down, and you have to finish that.
Even if it's hard. Doesn't matter. Stick through it, finish it. Okay? And before you choose your next thing to do. Really assess against your MED against your recipe goals and against your target goal. Okay? Is the next thing that I'm gonna do, truly, truly necessary? Not useful, necessary. Okay. Because you wanna identify as part of your MED exercise, the five or six things that are necessary, and when combined are likely to be sufficient.
'cause you don't have the time to do everything in the world. Okay? And if you've been learning for. While then I recommend that you kind of audit what you've already done and that you identify the gap. So for example, if you've already been learning for six to eight months, or you've been to a bootcamp, it's a little bit of a different process for you because you've learned a lot and you need to now [00:30:00] find the gap between what you've learned and what the market needs, right?
And then find the MED for that gap. Okay? So. Huh. Let's conclude now. Okay. The curriculum design transformation is really a process of understanding your goals. It's understanding your starting point. It's working out the minimum number of steps between your starting point and your goals and the sequence of steps to be taken, and it's going to transform your entire experience of learning If you do that, couple of things you should not do.
Stop following yet random YouTube tutorials. Be deliberate about what you consume. Be very deliberate about it.
Do not let some random algorithm choose where your time, attention, and effort are going. Especially if you're a time per person with a job and a family. Do not entrust some random algorithm to tell you what it needs.
Those algorithms are optimizing for engagement,
which serves the platform, does not serve your goals. Okay, number two, stop random. Learn everything. Just learn the minimum. Okay? That's necessary for your specific job target, which means you need to know your specific job target. [00:31:00] Number three, stop jumping around.
You follow one rule, you'll finish everything you start. Or in other words, don't start something newly finished. Whatever you do, that's your one rule. You cannot negotiate against that. Okay? Next, I want you to stop spending time on things that are useful, attractive, shiny, recommended by the algorithm or by some, SEO optimized blog.
I want you to prioritize. Only what's necessary if it's not necessary. If you're not sure it's necessary, do the research or assume it's merely useful. Most things that are necessary become pretty self-evident once you've done the research. Don't use opinions, assumptions, none of that. Don't ask some random person who's never done this exercise, even if they've been a code for five or 10 years, does not matter.
You do the research and learn how to think for yourself. Look at the job market, find out what's necessary, strip it down by 50% if you can, because that's probably truly what's necessary, and then get professional grade skills at that. Okay? Next,
stop copying other people's learning paths.
Not all of you're starting from the same place. Not all of you're [00:32:00] going to the same place. Their learning path may have nothing to do with you,
maybe a total waste of your time. Instead, figure out your own starting point, ending point, and customize your own curriculum. Take responsibility for it. Believe me, 90% of programming comes down to the basic tier three or four things.
It's pick a language note really well understand how to build with systems. Once you understand that language, understand front end and backend, understand how data moves. In fact, I have another episode on this and I can't remember what it is, what the number, episode number is. But it says, oh yeah, I think it's about how I learn any programming language now really fast, pretty much anything.
And it's about understanding that ultimately all of it is about data, moving, data around transforming data and knowing how to, use and access data. That's it. All programming comes down to that. Okay. In my opinion stop measuring your progress in days, a weeks. That's another important one. Most people say, oh, I've been spending 30 days learning to code.
Oh, I've been spending seven months. Learning to code means nothing. Start measuring the hours. Okay? This I learned, by the way, when I was a lawyer and I was doing aircraft. Aviation finance and leasing. And I realized, hang on, they don't talk about how many days this plane has been [00:33:00] flying. They talk about flying hours.
Okay? Because that's what decides where in 10. I said, actually that makes a lot of sense. Days and months make no sense. It's how many hours you've been doing something that makes sense. That's the actual metric to, to measure change, change my life. And I applied it to code.
So don't measure days a week.
Start measuring hours, especially if you're a time per person,
you need to measure the hours you have and the hours it's gonna take, and then it's simple math. If it's gonna take. I believe about 500 hours to get professional grade skills in, in a core set of necessary things, and you're only doing 10 hours a week.
There you go. That's 50 weeks straight up, no excuses. Assuming you spend a hundred percent of your available hours doing the right thing, and it's only 50 weeks. If you spend at least half of that doing the wrong thing, it's gonna take you two years. It's just math. Okay, finally. Please stop acquiring new technologies like trophies and badges of honor and things to put on your GitHub with all the various things.
Those stickers in GitHub, they honestly make you look like a complete newbie. Instead, start measuring the only thing that matters. You're trying to change your career, right? You're trying to get hired as a coder, right? It doesn't matter how many languages you do. Doesn't matter how many frameworks.
The only thing that matters if you're trying to get hired is how many [00:34:00] interviews you're generating. That's it. That's the only metric that matters because that's what you're trying to do. You're not trying to learn more code languages. That's not your goal. Your goal is to get hired.
So what's the hiring metric?
Interviews, right? Once you start getting interviews, you're gonna fail a bunch of them. That's normal. I teach my students about how to handle this and how to evolve from that, and how to generate lots of interviews. I teach them all of this. That's why it takes 12 months. But once you get interviews, you're gonna start failing them.
That's okay. Know that. That's normal. Okay. Check out interviewing.io. The founder, Elene Lerner, she and I have done some podcasts as well. She talks about this, that less than 25% of fang level interviews are consistent at interview performance. Between 75% are not consistent. Guys, that's just normal. So good.
Now that you're generating lots of interviews, your next goal is to how? Is to get good at being good at interviews. Okay? So first, get interviews, then figure out how to be really good at them. That's part of the learning process. Now let me finally bring this to an end by recapping for you. Why curriculum design is non-negotiable.
Do not dive straight into the [00:35:00] learning if you have no direction, because direction is more important than speed. There is a lot of freedom, psychological, emotional, and clarity wise that comes from having a very clear roadmap. It makes you feel better, it makes you feel the progress, and you also stop giving into self-doubt.
So here's what I'd suggest for you. Start this week, do some research into your talk target market. Start trying to figure out what your MED would look like, applying the necessary sufficient and useful framework. Do that for five hours this week. Do not code this week. It's okay. Code's not going anywhere.
Okay. Just since direction's more important than speed, just take the time out to figure out which way you wanna point your nose. 'cause that's half the battle right there. Do it for five hours this week. Figure it out. And then after that. Just start moving systematically. Come back to this podcast. It's available on Spotify.
It's available on YouTube, like, and subscribe. I'll give you the other stages in the coming week. This is the entire plan. This is what we do in the Inner Circle program. The only difference is I'm there to answer questions for people and I'm there to help them get unstuck. And I'm helped there to get help to, [00:36:00] to build their confidence when it's low.
Yes, there are other things that I can't do when I don't know you, but I'm trying to give you the entire recipe from the inner circle right here. Okay? Hooked up is useful. Please like and subscribe. Leave comments, ask questions. I'll be happy to answer them. I may be a little slow sometimes to respond because I try and not spend too much time on social media, but I will get back to you and I will try and help.
Hope that was useful and I'll catch you next time.
OUTRO
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