- Start your day early. If you have an early morning appointment, get up at least an hour before that.
- Practice critical thinking. Don't just take things on the surface value.
- Bias towards action. When you're stuck, when you're given a new piece of information, or when you're feeling dissatisfied being in your comfort zone, take an action, however small that action may be.
- Spend at least 15 mins reading about something that is related to your craft; a blog post, a few chapters of a book, an infomercial, etc.
- Set at least three micro goals a day and smash them. Examples of micro-goals are sending an email, taking notes, or paying a bill.
- Review your schedule for the next two days.
- Visualise your medium-term (3–5 years) goals.
- At the end of the day, make a mental note of at least one thing that you accomplished that day.
- When making a decision, ask yourself if you will make the same decision in six months, a year and two years time. Then ask why or why not.
- Don't be afraid to say no.
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Sometimes, I like to ponder on what I have been doing in my career and whether I am living the life that I want. I've often been labelled as an ambitious go-getter (in the nicest way, I think!). Some might even consider my career history as a success story.
But for me personally, I don't consider it as a success story. Allow me to explain...
Software engineers are makers by nature but they tend to lose this creative side as they begin their corporate careers, be it at startups or fortune 500 companies. Some say you can’t have everything in life — you can’t be an employee and an entrepreneur.
But I challenge that, and I say, you can have you cake and eat it too. Just because you’re working for someone doesn’t mean you hand over your creativity. There are many ways to create as a developer, aside from your full-time job as an employee.
In my research for the latest product I created for Senior Engineering leaders called CTO Toolkit, I found that there are 6 critical areas that fall within a senior technology leader’s remit, 3 are strategic and 3 are more operational.
In general, CTOs are responsible for:
⛳️ Technology Strategy
Evaluate the current technology landscape (technology stack, resourcing, capabilities, etc.) and recommend a forward-looking, short and long-term technology strategic vision and plan.
Does a software engineering manager (people manager) normally do a lot of coding in tech companies? I'll answer using my personal experience in the thread.
This photo was taken in 2016, 5 years ago. I was in front of a class of 30 mid-career professionals who had decided to make a career change and were learning to code. It was at a coding bootcamp.
As a speaker, I shared my story of how I got into tech and my tips on how to thrive in the industry as a software developer.
It was also one of my very first speaking experiences. I didn't think I did well, but a few students told me that they found it valuable.
Since then I have been speaking at many events, conferences and workshops sharing my knowledge. I speak not because I enjoy speaking or being the centre of attention.
People often ask about how to be productive or if I have any productivity hacks. I don't really consider them as hacks but these are the things I do. #productivity#manager#timemanagement
- Be ruthless with my calendar and theme my day so I can reserve focus time (eg: Meetings days, Writing days, Strategy days, etc)
- Observe my energy levels and schedule appropriate activities
- Understand what sparks my creativity and do more of that regularly
- Not relying on my memory — Record any ideas within 20 seconds