Professional Skills

Things that will make you better at many other things you might do. (I hate the term “soft skills”)

Not exclusively things you’ll want for “professional” reasons - learning, prioritisation, etc. are all valuable outside of work - but I don’t have a better name right now.

Learning

• DRMacIver’s Notebook: The fastest way to learn something is to do something

Feedback

• How To Praise

Communication

• Explaining

  • “the place where the question is asked is generally not the best place to write a detailed answer” [..] “Always look for a deeper, more permanent place to record explanations, ideally in the codebase or related documentation. Avoid explaining in ephemeral Slack- or Github conversation threads which won’t be easily discoverable by future maintainers”

  • This is a hugely hugely valuable point I’ve repeatedly tried to articulate, and never as well as this article, so it was great to find

Productivity

• Autofocus System - Get Everything Done