Okta presents: The Figure Skater

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When Aimee sits down at her desk and starts programming, few people would suspect where her problem-solving skills come from. She’d tell them it’s all thanks to her 4:30 AM workout, but it’s no ordinary run to the gym. Before the sun comes up, Aimee can often be found on the ice, running through the drills she learned as a professional figure skater.

For Aimee, skating is second nature, but it also allows her to clear her mind and let her subconscious play with the problems she has to solve at work.

These days, her mornings on the ice, what she calls her ‘hammock time’, prepare her for hours spent working with code as she builds a virtual comic book reader.

On the ice or at the gym Aimee’s identities play off each other, but her self-discipline comes from her skating past and her continued skating training. On one side, she is an athlete who for much of her life competed at the highest level.

After pursuing professional figure skating for years, she knows how to push her body to the limit, and that enables her to unlock her other side.

It is this other side that runs through programming challenges subconsciously, helps her see connections that she had previously missed, and solve the challenges she faces as a programmer.

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It’s this melding of selves that allows Aimee to do her best coding work.

Her ability to push her mental and physical self to the limit, and to use each to improve the other, has led her to become a regular guest at conferences and on podcasts about her work in tech.

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Aimee might have worried that she would lose the part of herself that she spent 10 grueling years of training to find. But instead she found it to be an asset in everything she does, and these days she’s focused on the multitude of opportunities that have come to her with the help of all she learned as a competitive figure skater.

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