I am keeping the developer in my mind while writing this article but it is applicable for anyone. Following things which drive my daily work. They help me to learn, explore and choose my career path.
In our day-to-day work, we all satisfy at some point for any task and then we move on. But after every completion of your task or your day, take a long breath and ask few questions. They set our direction. As the title suggests, these are small but effective steps.
Let's get started.
Am I doing in the best way?
After completion of the task, most of us are happy with the working solution. But if we stop and ask ourselves "is it the best solution?". We will find many ways to solve the same problem. Applying the best solution gives us more happiness in a day.
Sometimes applying the best solution is difficult due to constraints around you. Then, ask yourself "is my solution leaving the code in next better state?".
Am I leveraging the tools around me?
Tools are important pieces in our daily work. They make us more productive. The challenging part is to make a habit of exploring and adopting the tools on regular basis.
IDEs like IntelliJ, eclipse or visual studio provides a rich set of tools in every release. Most of the useful features lie in menus and toolbars unexplored. Exploring the features provided by IDE and using those tools makes the day very effective. Every IDE provides support for shortcut keys. Using them makes you more and more effective.
It's just not IDE, it's not the technology you work on. In a day we might need to compare any two files or retrieve notes saved somewhere in file system earlier. Then, a good tool saves a lot of time.
The above things are examples, apply them in a broader sense. Otherwise, we end up wasting time and energy for no purpose.
Am I leveraging new capabilities of my own technology?
We learn technology which is sufficient to complete the regular work. We don't look at the new things until the regular work demands us to learn.
It's important that we keep an eye and make a habit of learning new things and adopt in daily work. New releases bring new capabilities to solve different problems or old problems in better way.
If I exaggerate, using the latest smartphone just for making calls is same as ignoring adopting new releases in our technology.
Am I understanding my own technology ecosystem?
For an Android developer, it's not just enough to only follow Android. Rather understanding the mobile as the ecosystem is important. Also understand how other players like iOS, react native, .. etc are doing. That would give us an opportunity to understand where my technology at this moment.
Spend a couple of hours per week to understand ecosystem is sufficient. This directs the career, technology shifts, choices we take in future.
Conclusion
Thinking 1 extra mile makes a developer a great developer.
Vikram Babu Kuruguntla
Lead Technical
