Life-Lessons to learn from Open-Source and GitHub

Source: HackerNoon

Every experience in life teaches us some valuable lessons. When we contribute to open-source, we are focused on building a product that will either help accelerate our career or enhance our experience in a field. But, this isn’t it. Open-source has much more to it then the eyes can see. Innumerous life lessons can be learnt from this wonderful initiative.

Life Lessons — Are you kidding me?

Yes. You heard it right. Here are a few lessons which you need to take away and build upon each time you participate in open-source:

1. Learning Never Stops — Open-source helps you gain a lot of experience. You can learn from the different contributions made to your repository. Each contributor helps you to learn a lot more about your code. You can also learn from those mistakes that you commit while contributing or accepting contributions. There’s a whole lot of technologies out there that keep updating and thus earning is never gonna end.
2. The Power of Collaboration — In open-source, you try to solve larger problems with the help of people all around the globe. They might be someone from your network or someone totally stranger to you. During the process, you learn new ways and styles of collaboration. You even might gain insights into their culture and lifestyle. The end product is a much better project than you alone could do.
3. Where there’s a will, there’s a way — If you really want to contribute to open-source but are not good at coding, you need not lose hope. Technology isn’t the only way you can contribute. You can help write content, create designs and also help in testing or giving feedback. There are a lot more ways to contribute than you can even imagine. Similarly, in life, there’s always a door waiting for you, which you might have not yet noticed. Just keep striving towards your dreams and one day, you’ll reach there.
4. Find your Motivating Factor — Whatever you do in life, there is some source of motivation that drives you. Money isn’t the only reward in contributing to open-source. There might be times where you have a goal that is not connected to external motivating factors. You need to find what is it that helps you work more effectively towards achieving your goal.
5. Evolution is a part of life — Technology keeps changing. So do we. Change is a part of life. Adapt, Learn and Evolve. Don’t fear changes, instead embrace them. The same goes for your code. Be ready to accept contributions and accept new commits.
6. Appreciation and Gratitude — When someone helps you, you need to appreciate them. Gratitude not only motivates to continue helping others but also makes the effort worth it for both of you’ll. You can also build stronger connections with people by this small gesture.
7. It never ends — Just like the Earth’s ground, there’s never an end to open-source. Probably the best part about it is that projects are never complete. So is a human’s thirst to gain more. We need to know when to stop desiring certain things in our life.
8. Take a Break — It’s okay to get tired, especially when it is not a full-time job. Figure out your goal and takeaway from the project. Work while ensuring that you are happy and healthy. If it is affecting your health, you need to take a break. If you stop having fun, then you need to quit.

That’s it from my side, folks! Do share what lessons you have learnt by contributing to open-source in the comments section.