2024 #25: Bragging, Leadership Principles and planning your work

1. https://stackoverflow.blog/2024/05/22/you-should-keep-a-developer-s-journal/ Always good to jot down where you stop and what your thoughts were. This will make it easier to get started next time. It’s like the trick of leaving a broken unit test so that you know your first task the next day is to fix it. Also learning about morning papers and the brag document.

   If you do good work, will you always be recognized for it? A brag document might help with summarizing what you did and helps with advancing your career. When there is a performance review coming up, you can use the brag document to showcase your work and how you have improved. You, and certainly not your manager, can remember everything you did in a a year.

   Het helps to update your brag document every two weeks. As writing it all at once probably leaves a lot out.

   Brag Document Template

   Starter questions

   • What projects was I involved in?
   • What positive outcome did the project have?
   • What were contributions outside of the project?
   • What did I learn?
   • Where did I improve?

2. https://jdmeier.com/microsoft-leadership-principles/ Microsoft has changed under Satya Nadella. Huge respect to someone that can move such a large company to a new direction and be successful at it. If you’d look at Satya Nadella’s brag document you’d be humbled I reckon. Also a good reminder to read his book “Hit Refresh”.

   “The number one thing you have to do as a leader: to bolster the confidence of the people you lead.” — Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO

• Recognize the signal within the noise.
• Inspire optimism, creativity and shared commitment.
• Set high standards, measuring performance, and continuously seeking ways to improve and innovate.

3. https://andrewchen.substack.com/p/10x-work-versus-1x-work I’m not the kind of person to thrive on repetitive routines. Not a single day for me is the same and that is what keeps life exciting. Also not a type of person to do yoga or do positive affirmations. What things moved the needle for you this past year? Only in excertise I notice that consistency is key, but no reason to switch things up during training. How do you pick the tasks that have the most impact? This matches with the 80/20 rule. 20% of the work makes for 80% of the impact. Crossing off those checklists might not be the best idea. High risk often has a high reward. The best work doesn’t happen on reaction but based on a plan. In the same way, it’s important not to get caught into the loop of simply doing work that is assigned to you, answering emails that are waiting in your inbox, etc. Reactive loops are easy, but lead to decay. Sign yourself up for “tests of skill”. Also like him quoting Scott Adams:

   If you want an average successful life, it doesn’t take much planning. Just stay out of trouble, go to school, and apply for jobs you might like. But if you want something extraordinary, you have two paths:

   1. Become the best at one specific thing.
   2. Become very good (top 25%) at two or more things. Capitalism rewards things that are both rare and valuable. You make yourself rare by combining two or more “pretty goods” until no one else has your mix…