Two skills that will help you become an excellent developer

Translator: This article is a translation of the original article by Bara Franek, a JavaScript specialist. In his new material, he decided to tell what skills help the developer in his daily work. But this is not about software tools, but rather mental ones.

It doesn't matter if you work as a programmer for many years or just started your way. No matter what position you hold, work in the office or do freelancing. If you are a programmer, then your success is due to two extremely important skills: focus on work and concentrate.

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“The ability to dive deep into your work is extremely rare and at the same time extremely important for the economy. Those few who have managed to develop this skill will always be in a good position, ”says Cal Newport in his book Deep Work.
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I am going to use the moments read in the book, connecting them with my own experience and knowledge. I do this in order to tell how to become a successful developer.

From code fear to lead developer

I am a self-taught programmer who began his programming career at the age of 20. I have always considered myself creative in nature and thought that they would work where they needed a creative approach.

And it happened. After graduating from college, I started working for a graphic and web design company. I became a professional in Photoshop, I knew some HTML and CSS. But I didn’t learn more complicated things - something that required knowledge of PHP, for example, I gave to outsourcing.

I was afraid of the code for a long time and left this job for the guys with a diploma of completing the specialty "Programming". I believed that if you make a mistake in one character, you can derail the entire business of the client. In principle, this is not too different from the real state of affairs.

Now I work in a Fortune 50 company, I’m a professional developer and I’m involved in creating software that millions of people use every day. But how did I reach my current position, without being a programmer at the beginning?

My "secret" is in the ability to focus and dive into the essence of the problem. There is nothing more about me. I just found a way to concentrate on one thing for a long time and not be distracted.

Programming is an art

Indeed, programming often requires creativity. It may look too "technical" and dry for the average person. But in fact, you are the creator. You can create something from nothing. And this “nothing” is your own idea or product-manager's suggestion.

Then you begin to work and clothe the idea with the flesh, give it life. Not with colors or words, but with the help of a code (well, yes, of course, there are some words in the code, but you understand what I mean, right?).

If you want to create a cool product, software, then you need to constantly practice. The quantity and quality of your work will increase when you learn to work long and focused.

Art, music, writing - all this requires long periods of intense and continuous work. Distracted by a writer or artist - death is like, you can lose inspiration. But programming is no different than writing a book.

You become a more skilled programmer with each new successful (or not really) completed task. Then you manage to work by performing more volume in less time. All this is a matter of experience.

Yes, you can become a super developer

I don't like words like a ninja, a rock star, or a super developer. Actually, few programmers love these terms, but companies and recruiters simply adore them.

Super developers don't know how to fly and save people, as superheroes do in the Marvel comics. No, they just do more high-quality work per unit of time than regular developers. And able to do the task for a long time and not being distracted.

This, I tell you, is not a gift of fate. No one is born with this skill, it cannot be "turned on". In order for this skill to appear, you need to constantly train and work.

I interviewed a variety of specialties dozens of times, and I can tell you that super developers are in demand everywhere and always. They are looking for recruiters, trying to determine which of the applicants has the right qualities.

By the way, now open vacancies for various IT specialties are much more than the applicants themselves, so finding a job for a developer is not that difficult. The business has a task to close a “hole” in vacancies, so companies will do a lot to hire a good developer.

"Project managers believe that the lack of a strong talented developer is one of the potential threats to the growth of the company," - The Developer Coefficient .

In fact, finding a really talented developer is difficult. Practically any company will be satisfied with just a good specialist, without a super prefix. In principle, this is almost enough, since such a specialist can perform the task for which he was hired. No more and no less. For a company to find just a good developer is a great happiness, because a bad developer can be too expensive.

Two steps that will allow you to combine your programmer skill with focus and concentration

It's time to start walking up the career ladder. There are many opportunities, and if you like what you are doing, you can achieve a lot.

As an example, a developer’s transformation from junior to senor can be given. You can go through this stage of development without any special problems - but only if you develop the above skills in yourself.

“In order to remain an economically valuable cadre, you need to understand how to quickly learn complex things. It requires hard work and concentration. If you do not develop this ability in yourself, you will most likely not be able to succeed, ”- Deep Work.

Learning to focus is hard

The first thing I would like to say: learning to focus is really hard. This means that you cannot start writing tons of good code right away. And it will not work if you are not aware of how easily you can distract a person.

The ability to focus comes with practice, for this you need to spend a lot of time. It's not easy, but worth it. If you are ready for difficulties, then ok, little by little you can begin to move towards the goal.

Do not confuse employment with productivity.

The need to concentrate does not mean that you should close in a dark room and program 14 hours in a row. The fact that you are doing something does not mean that the task deserves to be worked on.

In other words, you need to learn to identify priorities. You need to be able to understand what is important and what is not. True, this is not included in the topic of today's article, but this skill is also significant.

The ability to focus brings results that are obvious to everyone. You can compare the fruits of your work in a state of deep concentration with the work of a sunbeam when it hits a magnifying glass. The beam, by focusing, allows you to burn traces even on the hardest tree or other material. It’s the same with focusing while working - without the ability to concentrate to work, it will not work, it's like trying to work with a magnifying glass in ambient light conditions.

Any distraction from work means a drop in concentration and dispersion of attention (in our analogy, the rays of the sun). If you learn to focus on work, you can put all the rays together and do important work, if not perfect, then close to that. By the way, there is no need to always use your skill - just be able to concentrate on the most important tasks.

Step 1. Eliminate distractions.

Multitasking against a person is a lie. You are deceiving yourself if you think that you can write good programs while being distracted by Slack or reading news

We live in a world that distracts us always and everywhere. Technologies are good, but sometimes they only contribute to the dispersion of attention.

It is necessary to remove all unnecessary:

• Put the phone on silent mode or turn it off altogether. In order for the phone not to bother, you can use special software, for example, Forest .
• Close Slack. This also applies to other instant messengers. Most of them are very loud, so the message alert will distract you at work anyway. In order to get rid of this, exit all instant messengers. Many of them are not critical.
• Close any other applications that may distract your attention, for example, email clients.
• The hardest thing is to close and not open again the tabs in the browser that have nothing to do with your work. In order not to perform this task independently, you can use specialized applications.
• We use headphones. They allow you not to be distracted and concentrate on work. In addition, many recommend finding music that helps you focus and work only for it.

Step 2. The secret weapon - Pomodoro

If you already start to panic, realizing that for eight hours you will not be able to not be distracted, then do not worry. Pomodoro will help you. It consists in the following:

Break your work into 25-minute blocks (tomatoes)

Try to work for 25 minutes without being distracted. Use timers, you can hourglass, mechanical, software.

After working, rest for five minutes.

It is extremely important that every 25 minutes you get up and leave for five minutes. Drink water, pozalipayte on various sites, go wash. Whatever it was, you need to completely escape from work for these five minutes.

Perform only one task at a time.

You can search for a bug, develop new functions, write code. If the task is too large (to develop an application), then it is worth breaking it up into separate segments of five minutes.

Some tasks require the execution of several blocks (tomatoes). So, you may need three tomato parrots to add a specific function and two more to test new items.

All this is necessary in order to divide seemingly impossible tasks into many parts. For the most part, we will color it out because we are simply afraid to take on particularly difficult tasks. And then it turns out that we are gradually moving these tasks away, leaving them for later. And then we are even more afraid of them, because the amount of work that needs to be done does not go anywhere. If we break a large task into separate elements, for example, “write 300 words”, then the problem is not so terrible.

Refusal from procrastination (at least partial) will make you a better developer.

Can not be distracted

If you are distracted, then you need to start all over again.

How to work for 25 minutes without a break?

Even this is a problem for many. Perhaps you, without even noticing it, were always distracted, so that the minimum amount of time was spent on the work itself. If it is difficult, try to start with ten minutes, then - 15, then - 20 and 25.

If desired, the blocks can be increased up to 55 minutes, if you have not enough 25 minutes and you have learned not to be distracted by extraneous factors.

It may well be that even 25 minutes of continuous work will seem difficult for you, because you cannot look out the window, check your mail, Telegram. If it is very hard, try to perform only one block per day (this does not mean that you will work 25 minutes a day, which means that you will try not to be distracted while completing your task). But remember: if you are distracted, you need to start counting 25 minutes again.

How does this help become a good developer?

Let's be realistic. Your career will not be helped by the fact that you will go from the code editor to the chat, then check your mail and instant messengers while in Asana there is an important task that needs to be done right now.

But a few hours of work, performed with a deep immersion in the task, will help you accomplish a much larger volume in a day than you usually do, distracting literally everything.

As already mentioned, try starting with one “tomato”, then gradually increase their number, and then the size of the “tomatoes” themselves, that is, the amount of time during which you work with the maximum concentration.

So minutes will merge into hours, hours - into days, and days - into weeks and months. And you, without even noticing it, will learn to work with maximum efficiency, which will not pass unnoticed at work. Yes, and your skill programmer is pumped in earnest, after which the capacity will be more, because any company needs such programmers.

From the translator: as a conclusion, it can be said that the advice from this article is not a revelation or disruption of covers, but with their help you can learn to work well without prostrastiny and not being distracted by unnecessary things.

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