Developer Tea

You know how to determine what would be a good decision. You have the tools and the reasoning; if you find yourself still not making the right decision, you may be tempted to focus on the "left side"…

Determining your values isn't just about fluff. This is what you personally care about.

In this episode, we talk about two ways to use direct observation as a tool for determining your values, and why…

Focus on what you can control. Create incentives and language and internal narrative that produces the right actions within your locus of control. Avoid attaching your definition of success to things…

Don't buy in to the lie that you have to overwork to succeed. Not only is it not true, it's also dangerous - and the opposite is more accurate.

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In today's episode, I provide a simple coaching tip on improved communication for software engineers. It's simple: always make precision explicit, and layer context. Start with precision, then create…

We don't think about the unexpected as a category of possible outcomes. This leads us to assign overestimated probabilities to things that are front of mind, and discount the likelihood of things we …

Look closer at the things that don't happen. Evaluate the options you never considered. When you are looking back, don't just judge based on actions and outcomes - look at the quality of decisions th…

You can't wait for luck to strike, but you also won't always get what you deserve. Both of these are true - so, go make luck happen for you!

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Habits aren't built on their own. They are the result of environments.

Reduce friction and create a positive reinforcement loop, and the habits will follow.

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What happens in high-stakes environments?

Is the learning you do in your low-stakes environment actually helping you when you have skin in the game?

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Having trouble setting goals? Take a look at a different angle with the guided exercise in today's episode.

🙏 Today's Episode is Brought To you by: Square

Square has APIs for almost every aspect of run…

Our goals usually take two forms: what we want to accomplish, and who we want to be.

When we can align these things, we find cohesion in our goals, giving us more clarity and purpose.

🙏 Today's Episode…

Two guidelines for better goal setting.
First, goals don't stand alone.
Second, ranges often beat arbitrary points.

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Stop and think about how you are spending your time.

Time is constantly moving, whether we stop to recognize it or not. How will you spend it? These five powerful questions will help you reconfigure y…

A short term mindset will focus on different things than a long term mindset. Neither is right or wrong, but what are you optimizing for?

Once you answer this question, you can start to work towards f…

Your best tool is your next question.

🙏 Today's Episode is Brought To you by: Square

Square has APIs for almost every aspect of running a business from employee management, to order creation and tracki…

Diffuse thinking produces options and draws connections. Focused thinking narrows things down to a specific path.

Use them both, and watch for when they collide.

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Doing nothing seems like it would be easy... But it seems that action is often easier than doing nothing.

Sometimes, perhaps often, action is the right choice. However, if there is no reason to believ…

You are not the sum of your decisions. Making better decisions often relies on having a long list of mistakes to learn from.

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How does the smartest person in the world solve the most complex problems that most mathemeticians can't even understand?

The same way you write code and build features at your job. The principles alw…