Weightlifting & Salesforce – Do They Mix?

When you decide to begin lifting weights, you don’t just pick up the barbell and hope for the best. It has taken me years to build up to a heavy squat clean and if you don’t know what that looks like, check out this video. It may look easy on the surface, but behind every lift is a combination of multiple factors contributing to a successful completion.

Each component of the lift is broken down into manageable pieces. You begin with a PVC pipe and drill each part of the movement until you have one fluid lift. Once you get comfortable with that, then you perform the same movements with a barbell. When you’ve mastered that, you slowly begin moving weight. Over time you build that weight up and continuously improve the movement while lifting heavier weight.

So what does Salesforce have to do with weightlifting? Well, seemingly nothing except in how I approach learning something that up until earlier this year was pretty foreign to me. These are the things I think about when approaching the more complicated functionalities in Salesforce.

When first learning something like validation rules or flows, it is helpful to break it down into small pieces. You don’t just attempt to build a complicated validation rule or flow and expect it to do what you want. You start off by learning the various components you’re working with and what they do, break them down into small pieces, and test along the way. The setup is always important, what should you be planning/thinking about beforehand? As you are building, what are the steps involved and what components do you need to accomplish them? As these concepts become more familiar, you can then add another component, test and repeat.

In my endeavor to learn Salesforce, I have been surprised to find there are many parallels with weightlifting and have been able to utilize this in my approach. They both take hard work, patience, practice, consistency, and most importantly, humility and a willingness to keep learning.