Yoga and the Art of Your Salesforce Practice

In my previous post about how the worlds of yoga and Salesforce overlap, we talked about how the traditional concepts of the Yamas and Niyamas serve as disciplines and guidelines that can be applied to life and to how we maintain our Salesforce orgs. These are two of the eight limbs of yoga that come together to complete a yogi. In this new post, I argue that embracing asana, the physical practice, is another piece of the pie that contributes to a successful Salesforce Admin.

Asana

When you hear the word yoga, you are most likely envisioning the asana limb of yoga, or physical practice. These are the postures that we move through in a yoga class. The goal is that having an active body allows us to find stillness in our minds. 

Many other fitness disciplines are described as being a practice because this conveys that we work at something over and over again in the effort to get better at the activity. Being a Salesforce Administrator is no different. 

Practice Makes Progress

Whether you are an Admin at a small nonprofit or for a large organization, it is impossible to know everything about your Salesforce instance or to expect it never to change. That is why Salesforce Admins are referred to as Trailblazers — they are innovators always striving towards a more developed, and more efficient org. You can learn more about Salesforce Trailblazers all over the world (including my colleague, Linda Adams) here. 

With every validation rule, every formula, every new configuration you build, you are honing your craft and practicing your art.

With a new release three times each year and ever changing features, Admins often have to dive into something they aren’t familiar with and learn quickly. I remember learning how to create effective workflow rules and thinking how remarkable they were. The next year I was revolutionizing automation with Process Builder’s cross object capacity. Now, Flow is the future and expands our declarative capabilities even farther with tools like Before Save Triggers... Check out this Trailhead Module to learn more about this awesome functionality from the Winter 21 Release!

Tools to Strengthen Your Salesforce Practice

Without treating our Salesforce careers as a practice, we can easily fall behind and become obsolete as we move into the 5th Industrial Revolution. Fortunately there are many tools we have in our belt to continue our practice, and continue our growth.

There are organizations dedicated to up-leveling Trailblazers such as radWomen(); and the Salesforce Pathfinder program where Admins can learn new skills and get connected with other learners. Check out the Trailblazer Workforce Directory to see if one of these organizations is a good fit for you.

Trailhead is a free online mecca of learning with over 1000 badges and more than 15 superbadges for self learning and growth.

There are more than 40 Salesforce certifications, and each year certified Salesforce professionals get the opportunity to continue learning to maintain their certifications.

Being a Salesforce Administrator is a practice. It requires hard work, love of learning, and a little uncertainty because you will never know everything about your org. Salesforce is always changing, and with each new release our Salesforce practice becomes stronger. 

So are you an Admin, or are you a Trailblazer Yogi?

What do you do to keep your practice going strong? Tell me more in the comments below, in the Salesforce Trailblazer Community, or tweet directly at me @SalesforceK8. Subscribe to the Arkus newsletter to get the top posts of the Arkus blog directly to your inbox.