It’s time to read a book, soft Skills: A Survival Guide Beyond Code

This book is not a guide to writing good code, but a guide to being a well-rounded person.

The author looks back over his entire career and divides it into seven chapters: Career, Self-marketing, Learning, Productivity, finance, Fitness and spirituality.

Each article is a summary of practical experience, not a lot of big truths, but they are heartfelt words that will make you think and change.

1. Careers 💼

Tip # 1: Start with something extraordinary

Never do what everyone else is doing.

1) Have a business mindset: Think of your software development business as a business

2) How to think like a business: What can I offer as a business

  • Focus on what service you are providing and how to market it
  • Find ways to improve your service
  • Think about what specific types of customers or industries you can focus on serving
  • Focus on becoming an expert who specializes in providing holistic services to a specific type of client (remember, as a software developer, you’ll only find great jobs if you really focus on one type of client)

Tip # 2: Crack the interview code

The key to cracking the interview code is to think about your interview strategy before the interview even begins

  • Maintain technical capability
  • Social Networking (push-in)
  • Practice: Go to more interviews

Tip 3: Specialization is important

While it’s true that specialization closes some doors, at the same time it opens many more doors than you would otherwise

Tip # 4: Climb the ladder

The most important thing you can do to stand out in any company is to take on more responsibility.

1) How can I take on more responsibility?

  • There’s a project that’s getting no attention. Can you take charge of it?
  • Can you help new people on your team grow up quickly?
  • Can you take care of the documentation process and ensure that it is kept up to date?
  • What is one task that no one else wants to do that you are willing to take on, simplify or automate?

2) How to make yourself stand out

  • Keep a daily log of your activities — send it to your manager as a weekly report
  • Offer presentations or training — choose a topic that will be useful to your team
  • Give your opinion — just do it in meetings, or whenever you get the chance
  • Get “visibility” — Meet with your boss regularly to make sure you’re constantly being noticed

Tip # 5: Become a professional

Being a professional is a mindset. If we constantly struggle with fear, self-destruction, procrastination and self-doubt, here’s the problem: we’re thinking like amateurs. Amateurs look nothing, amateurs talk nonsense, amateurs yield to adversity. Professionals don’t think so. No matter what, he stands out, he does his job, he’s consistent.

Tip 6: Don’t get caught up in the tech craze

I’m a big believer that if you can stop yourself from being a believer in a particular technology, you’ll go a long way in your career.

2. Self-marketing 🏆

Tip # 1: Software developers should also market themselves

Why self-marketing is so important: Don’t think software development is any different. You may be the most talented software developer in the world, but if no one knows you exist, you’re nothing. Sure, you’ll always find work, but you’ll never reach your full potential unless you learn the skills of “how to market yourself.”

1) What is marketing: Is marketing a competition for people’s attention

2) What does self-marketing mean: The core of marketing lies in connecting the desired product or service with the product or service itself.

3) The key to successful self-marketing: If you want people to like you and want to work with you, you have to provide value to them

4) Ways to market yourself

  • blog
  • video
  • contribute
  • Speaking at large technical conferences

5) The basic mechanism of self-marketing is that in order for people to follow you and listen to you, you have to bring value to them: you have answers to their questions, even joy. If you continue to improve yourself and don’t add value to others, you won’t get very far because everyone will leave you.

6) What are the elements of the brand

  • The message of the brand
  • Visual symbol of the brand
  • Brand consistency
  • Brand exposure

7) The secret to a successful blog: The biggest secret to a successful blog is one and only one — consistency

Consistently writing, consistently producing high-quality content, and if you do those two things, you’re basically successful.

8) How to increase blog traffic

  • The first strategy I would recommend is to start commenting on other people’s blogs. Find developers who blog on similar topics, write meaningful comments on their blogs, and link to your own blogs whenever possible

  • Another great way to get traffic in the early stages is to share your blog posts on social networks

9) The main goal of self-marketing is to add value to others

  • Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value. — Albert Einstein
  • If you help enough people get what they want, you’ll get what you want

Tip # 2: Make 90% of your work free

  • Free content is easier to share than paid content
  • Free content allows you to reach a much larger target audience than paid content
  • By offering free content, you give people a chance to see how valuable your content is without spending money
  • While doing these things for free may seem like a waste of time, think of it as an investment in your future. By creating value for people and offering it for free to market yourself, you gain a reputation for providing value to others and opportunities for your own future. The value of that reputation is immeasurable. It can help you win a better, higher-paying job, get more clients, or successfully launch a product

Tip 3: Be the Talking Geek

Speaking and hosting some form of training is one of the most effective ways to connect with the general public and market yourself.

Tip # 4: Stay strong and persevere

  • If you want to succeed, you have to learn to swallow your fragile ego and go out there without being afraid to make a fool of yourself
  • Be prepared for criticism, but don’t be afraid

3. Learn about 📖

Tip 1:10-step learning

The basic idea of the 10-step method is to have a basic understanding of what you’re trying to learn — just know what you don’t know.

The specific steps of the ten-step learning method:

Advice 2: Teach: If you want to learn, be a teacher

I’ve found that the best way to teach is to look at a problem from a humble perspective and interpret it with authority.

I mean, when you’re teaching, you don’t have to be smarter or more knowledgeable than the student, but you have to be confident and believe in what you’re saying.

No one wants to study with someone who has no confidence in what they are saying, and no one wants to be seen as stupid in the process.

4. Productivity 📉

Tip # 1: It all starts with focus

Tip 2: Overcome burnout

One of the biggest obstacles to productivity is physical and mental burnout.

How to solve:

  • Knowing that your efforts will not be in vain will help you stick with it and eventually get through it
  • You need to create a set of rules for yourself to keep moving: like doing something at a certain time each day (a habit)

Tip 3: Break tasks down

When faced with a big problem, we tend to spend more time thinking about the problem than taking action to solve it. Humans tend to take the path of least resistance. When faced with a big task, checking email or making a cup of coffee seems like the easier path, procrastination ensues

Tip # 4: The value of hard work

  • Everything of value is the result of hard work. In life, and especially in a career in software development, if you want to see results, you have to learn to sit down and do work you don’t want to do — and do it consistently

  • In my opinion, we think hard work is most likely to be work that will benefit us a lot. The hard work is most likely to advance our careers or open doors of opportunity. All the jobs that don’t pay any dividends always seem so easy

  • If you really want to be productive, you have to learn to work smart and hard. Being smart is not enough. A certain amount of tact is necessary, but to be truly successful, a certain amount of perseverance is also necessary in the face of setbacks

  • If one of your partners is willing to stick at something longer, eventually they will surpass you. At first, you might be ahead of them. At first, your passion may give you a temporary burst, but the people who are willing to put in the long hours and stick to boring work to get the job done will eventually pass you and pull ahead

  • We all have a tendency to procrastinate and avoid the work that really matters to us

  • If we are to pursue success together, we have to learn how to defeat this resistance. But how to defeat this enemy? How can we break down the resistance and make it surrender? We just sit at our desks and do what we’re supposed to do. We must learn to keep our feet on the ground and work hard. There are no easy answers.

5. Financial management 💰

1) Understanding of money

Money is just a tool. It will take you wherever you want to go, but it won’t replace you as a driver. — Ayn Rand

2) Assets and liabilities

An asset is something that is more useful than it costs to maintain. This means that to qualify as an asset, something must be worth more than it costs.

Indebtedness means just the opposite. A liability is something that costs more than it is worth. In other words, to stay “in debt,” you have to pay out, but you’ll never get back as much money as you paid out.

3) How to negotiate your salary

  • Just remember: The better you market yourself, the better your reputation, and the easier it is to negotiate your salary. This may even be the most important factor. Some software developers I’ve worked with have doubled their salaries based solely on the personal brand and online reputation they’ve built
  • The person with the greatest need is usually at a disadvantage in any negotiation
  • When you’re actively looking for a job, you should try to get personal references
  • The first bidder loses

4) Financial freedom

  • The only way to truly achieve financial success is to make money from money
  • To be financially free, you must be able to make your money work for you. If profits give us freedom, then it must be added that debt chains us

6. fitness 🏃♂️

  • The body is the best reflection of the soul. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

  • Fitness is not only one of the keys to maintaining a healthy body, it is also the foundation for flexible, creative mental activity. — John F. Kennedy

  • If you can only choose a few moves, I recommend the following in order of value: squats, deadlifts, bench presses and barbell presses. You will definitely see muscle growth even with just these movements.

7. Spiritual passage 🧘

  • If you do not conquer yourself, you will be conquered by yourself. “– Napoleon Hill
  • At the root of positive thinking is the belief that you are greater than your surroundings. This belief allows you to always look on the bright side of things first, because you have the power to change your future no matter your circumstances. This is the highest belief in human achievement, the most powerful force in the world. This faith allows you to tap into this power, this power that lies quietly in your heart, but not so ethereal

1) What is self-image

Self-image is how you see yourself after you rid yourself of what others think of you and all the lies and deception you use to comfort yourself

2) Be positive about failure

  • As a software developer, this trait is especially important to you, as you are likely to face numerous difficulties in your life and career

  • I still recommend exposing yourself to failure. Do things that make you uncomfortable

I’ve distilled the book into a mind map:

Curtain link: link

The last two parts of the book, fitness and spirit, are a bit like chicken soup, but the author wants to express the importance of fitness and the mentality in the face of failure are indeed more important in the whole career.

Especially fitness.

Most of the time when writing code is sitting down, and many people do not like exercise. However, long-term sitting and no exercise will make their physical fitness worse and worse, which is not an optimistic thing for people with long-term career goals.

To avoid causing harm to your body, we can get into the habit of standing at work by buying a lift desk.

At the same time, take out a little time every day to exercise, not too strenuous exercise, jogging, fast walking, skipping can be, long-term persistence, has great benefits to the body.