What I've learned in May 2025

What was done in May

It’s time to look back and analyze what I’ve done on May 25, and set the goals for June. Unfortunately, I started to log activity only on the 13th of May, so this report is incomplete, but I tried to remember the tasks until that day.

• 11 leetcode tasks by the topics: general graphs, tries and backtracking. It doesn’t look like enough.
• Started and continue to do a course about cloud engineering. Primarily a practice course.
• Started to watch a system design course (video course).
• Tried to take an interviewer course. I would like to provide coding interview sections in my company, but despite the fact that I am training in leetcode, I failed the course entrance mock. 
• Changed an English teacher. I've been working with a previous teacher for about 10 months, my speaking and writing skills have progressed enough, but anyway the change of teacher could boost my learning, because it gets a bit stressful again (the same at the real interview).
• Tackled an incident in business-critical service.

So, it doesn’t look impressive, but in May there were a lot of holidays, and I did a “pointless project” in tight deadlines, so after work I preferred to spend time with my family. For example, we went to horse races for two weekends. Yes, relaxing enough is also required for long-term goals.

Plans for June

What are my plans for the next month? There are:

• I will continue to solve leetcode tasks and spend some time repeating solved tasks.
• Continue watching the system design course.
• I would like to finish my cloud course. Yes, this is an ambitious goal.
• Prepare hints for an interview, especially for behavioral and screening interviews. It won’t be a silver bullet, but it allows me to prepare for the most asked questions.

Looking back at my tasks tracker and calendar I noticed many tasks were transferred to another time period. It looks like I tend to underestimate myself, so in June I want to try focusing only on several goals and skip any others.