As the new year begins, it's the perfect moment for many people to review the past year and set the goals for its successor. I like to do it as well, looking behind to check if my expectations were fulfilled, and choosing new ones for the upcoming year. So, how was 2023 for me?
At the beginning, I set as a main professional resolution the goal of keeping learning and growing as a developer and team leader without affecting my private sphere. In other words, being more efficient at learning, and at the same time slow down not to "steal" time from my family and my hobbies.
This is a very vague objective, and I had no idea how to achieve what I was hoping. Analyzing the way I was utilizing my spare time, I saw there was not much room to scrap some more time out. I definitely didn't want to stop training, and spending less time with my family was off the table. That's when I thought "So what, do I try to learn new coding techniques or browse tech radar websites while I am jogging?".
For a moment I thought of setting up a treadmill in front of my working station to achieve it, but apart from the annoying process of installing it and keeping it tidy and usable, what stopped me from implementing this dumb idea was the image of myself suddenly forgetting I was standing on a moving surface (when I do study, it happens I need to focus and I forget where I am and what I am doing) and smashing my nerd face on the desk, spilling out coffee and all the items we nerds like to have around us.
Deadlock, I thought.
Later on, I realized the idea was not (that) stupid. There would have been nothing against listening to learn, instead of reading. This would open to the possibility of switching from music to a podcast during my jogging.
After a bit of research, I found two shows that would hit the brief in term of what I like to learn and the direction I want to take. I started listening to them during my training sessions, and after a while I decided to stick with the one I liked the most.
So, one of the biggest achievements of 2023 for me was discovering the SyntaxFM podcast. I could learn a lot and keep myself up to date with the latest on the development world while jogging! The classic two birds with a stone: while taking care of my fitness I also feed my knowledge. If you see a strange man jogging with the "eureka" or the "hello world" face, that's me.
Listening to this podcast it's something I recommend to every dev. So, if you don't know it yet, go check it out.
The scope of their talks is very diverse, some arguments are more interesting to me, others less, but I am free to pick up the insights and go in depth with the topics I find more exciting.
The syntax guys publish 3 episodes a week (perfect for my training schedule), often interview other really clever developers or players in the web development universe, and like to explore what's newest and hottest in the field.
After their show, often times I find myself experimenting some features they were talking about (either at work or on my side projects), checking out the APIs I just learned about, and so on. I won't want to list all the new things I learned thanks to this approach, they would be too many.
I will mention only a little tip I have used to further refine the 2023 resolution: being more efficient. On an episode, a guest developer suggested to start using AI heavily, for the daily duties, to really understand the power of it and earn more time for more important things. The guy proposed to do an experiment: take one week, do everything you can with the help of AI chatbots (e.g., writing emails). I tried it for my private administrative emails (they mostly are in German, it takes me long time to write them 'cause I don't master the language yet, and I end up checking them a thousand times before sending them). It saves me so much time, I didn't realize such a little thing could bring so much. With a simple command to an AI chat like "write a letter in German to the kindergarten asking about the new opening times and prices" the engine produces a very well written email, ready to be sent after some minor changes, grammatically correct and polite.
I didn't know you could learn so much simply by listening, so if you spend many minutes commuting to work, or you do solitary jogging/biking/hiking, or any solo activities you could spice up with some learning by listening to podcast, I'd suggest you browse a catalog of podcasts and pick up the ones you like the most.
I recently added a German podcast (Eine Stunde History) from Deutschlandfunk Nova, to keep my German skills polished with a topic (History) I am really interested into. So, 2023 has been a big year for me, professionally.
Now it's your turn, 2024. What's my resolution for this year? Well, I would like to grow further, but at the same time slow down a little bit. The rapid advancements in web development every day leave me feeling overwhelmed and I get the feeling I am falling behind. I know that in our industry, the moment you stop, it's really difficult to keep the pace and one becomes very quickly obsolete or outdated. Too much to learn, not enough time. I aim to better structure and allocate my time, instead of randomly picking up my laptop to work on side projects. I will start with dedicate some time slots in the evenings for it, let's see where it will lead.
As this long post comes to an end, I'd like to wish you all a brilliant 2024.