The key to success in four personal qualities

I’m certainly not a professional psychologist, but I have already had some experience that, I think, allows me to highlight some human qualities that may be useful for the developer and his life.

The article as a whole is more for novice developers, and for experienced old-timers everything described will probably be obvious, but maybe something useful can be learned by them as well. Write reviews and express your views on this topic, it will also be interesting to read.

Based on my opinion, these are the following four personal qualities : diligence , ability to optimize processes , flexibility of thinking and altruism .

Let's talk a little about each of these qualities.

Zeal

It seems to me that this is a sore subject of our CIS world. We have forgotten how to diligently achieve a specific final result. It is generally somehow not even masculine. A typical problem for most people: do everything transparently and with minimal return, 70-80% of the desired result, wait for the "kick" from the management, but for now no one has done this kick - safely spit at the ceiling. Decisions that are made "at random", without normal analysis and analytics.

Worse from such a lifestyle in the first place to the person himself, and in the second - to our whole society. This applies not only to programmers, it is more generally about all areas of activity.

I like to say to myself some sayings that motivate me to be more diligent and responsible, let me share with you my most beloved ones:

• Without difficulty, you can not catch a fish from the pond
• Patience and a little effort
• If you suffer for a long time - something will turn out
• No wonder they say "Nibble on the granite of science"

I wish everyone to become more responsible and diligent and to love these personal qualities, only with which you can create really high-quality services and applications that have the minimum number of errors and bugs.

Ability to optimize processes

Being a diligent dude is cool, but sometimes there is another problem, which is that such a person starts chasing indistinct numbers and indicators instead of chasing the efficiency and speed of getting the final result.

For example, there are people who believe that if you sleep less and spend more time at a computer, this will be an indicator of their superiority, because it indicates a high level of diligence. But this emphasis on the wrong metrics. It is not so important how much time you sit at the computer or how much time you are awake, how important it is how much useful things you manage to do in a certain unit of time.

It is necessary to rest from work, and sleep is also useful to fully, because sleep in general is an important component of the life cycle of our brain, during which it “stores” information acquired during the day, including in the deeper layers.

It is also good to be distracted from her work, so that she resembles the routine as little as possible. I personally try to work in small bright sessions. Of course, this is not always the case for one reason or another, but when it turns out, the work turns into a sort of driving journey and tactful work on current bugs and features.

I would like to collect all these subtleties of life in this personal capacity, and lastly I want to write some simple tips from myself that can help you start thinking in terms of optimizing all processes:

• All that can be simplified - simplify (do not clog the brain with unnecessary abstractions)
• Use ready-made tools created by other people (do not reinvent the wheel)
• Save on resources and manpower: they are not endless (do not do unnecessary things)
• Do not forget about the principle of DRY (Don't repeat yourself)
• Do not forget about the principle of KISS (Keep it short and simple)

If your diligence combines with the desire to optimize all your business - perhaps you can do everything several times faster than other people, but isn't that great?

Flexibility of thinking

It is good when we strive to optimize all our processes and affairs, but even better when we strive to think flexibly and are not afraid of experiments and violations of established dogmas if we see in them a grain of irrationality.

I call this quality Jackie Chan quality for myself. We all know how cleverly he managed to use surrounding objects in order to solve his "problems", although these objects were not originally intended for this at all. For example, his films clearly demonstrate that the chair next door can be very comfortably smashed against the head of an unfriendly-minded person who has approached too closely.

Flexible thinking allows you to find solutions where people with an ossified and overly “dogmatic” style of thinking become disheartened and helpless. And here I would like to bring back some simple tips that I hope will help you develop this quality in yourself:

• Try to solve typical problems in a creative and unusual way.
• Do not focus on one solution
• Do not be afraid to invent your own solutions, but do not forget to analyze the world on what has already been done by other people (so as not to reinvent the wheel)
• Do not be afraid to experiment: trying - not torture
• Be like Jackie Chan: use the surrounding reality for maximum benefit, not paying attention to what these or other objects were originally intended for.

Altruism

This quality, which is probably like a cherry on a cake in a person’s personality. IT specialists as a whole are hard to blame for the absence of altruism, because they are like physicians, typical “programmers”, often helping their relatives and friends for free in solving IT problems.

But still, I would like to remind everyone that the joint development of open source projects is a very interesting thing, which, among other things, can develop your personal skills. And also, people who have time to help with open projects and help fix bugs in them, as I noted, are generally more valuable and enjoyable employees who don’t want to let go of the organization.

The quality of an altruist makes a person out of a person It removes this bile and hatred from his personality and adds to him the qualities of compassion, patience and support from other people.

And what if all people start supporting each other in their affairs? Will the world be worse off? I do not think so.

Conclusion

We considered four personal qualities that, in my opinion, are important for any developer: diligence , ability to optimize processes , flexibility of thinking and altruism . It seems to me that the presence or absence of these qualities strongly affects the effectiveness of a person as a modern developer.

And I hope that this small essay will make people better and benefit them, and I myself try to follow what I wrote. Thank you for your attention and pleasant development!