Get Better
Series: growth October 24, 2011
... the sooner you care, the better you'll make. The better you'll do. And the better you'll live.
Merlin Mann
Take 5 minutes to:
- Read the most interesting blog post in your RSS reader
- Look through the code you wrote today and find a place to improve
- Write down any problems you encountered today
- Learn a new keyboard shortcut for your IDE, source control tool, or shell
- Ask a co-worker if they’ve read anything interesting lately
Take 15 minutes to:
- Refactor a piece of code you wrote this week
- Find code that’s missing tests and add one
- Update your team/company wiki
- Read a few of the top stories on news.yc or /r/programming
- Read a chapter in a technical book
- Write a thoughtful comment on a blog post
Take 30 minutes to:
- Watch a talk from a conference that interests you
- Write a blog post about a bug you encountered and how you fixed it
- Write a blog post about something you’ve been working on or learning about
- Listen to a podcast - here are some I like: Podcast Roundup
- Do a kata or a problem on Project Euler
- Attend a brownbag or lunch-and-learn
Take an hour a week to:
- Help an open source library that you use - patchs, documentation, bugs
- Work on a side-project on your own
- Watch a screencast about something new
- Try to answer some questions on StackOverflow
- Do prep work to host a brownbag or meetup talk
- Take an online class: Stanford courses on iPhone, Machine Learning, AI
Take 2 hours a month to:
- Go to a local dev meetup
- Take someone you look up to out to lunch and pick their brain
- Do self reflection and update your position on The Long Road
- Plan out how to Get Better over the next month
Take a weekend a year to:
- Go to a conference
- Attend a Startup Weekend or Hackathon
- Use your craft to help others
Take one minute a day - just 60 seconds - to stop and ask yourself this question:
Did I Get Better today?
If you aren’t happy with your answer, do something about it.