Caffeinated Coder

I know this is rather late in January to be doing this, but I’ve been rather distracted with the blog migration and this was one of several posts that’s been languishing in a half-finished state in my drafts folder for the last several weeks.

Instead of doing the typical new year’s resolution list full of unrealistic goals, I decided that I would follow an agile retrospective format and sort my thoughts into the “Keep Doing”, “Start Doing”, and “Stop Doing” categories. In this post I will just focus on the “Keep Doing” part and then I’ll tackle the other two categories in the next post.

Here are seven things I would like to keep doing in 2008.

1. RSS Surfing – It wasn’t until the beginning of 2007 that I really became an avid reader of blogs. Now I struggle to keep my hundred plus feeds organized and prioritized, especially since I supplement the flow of information with posts from Reddit, DZone, and del.icio.us. Despite the overwhelming amount of material, I am still hooked on the blog format and see it as the single biggest driver for my professional growth this last year.
2. Blogging – Besides enjoying the actual process of writing, I have been surprised by the affect this blog has had on my motivation to learn new things and dig deeper into my current understanding of technologies and practices. I don’t know how many times I’ve stopped in the middle of writing a post to research something more in depth or try out something new because writing about it helped me detect a gap in my understanding that I otherwise would not have noticed.
3. Speaking – I volunteered to speak at two .NET user group meetings for the first time in my career this last year and was pleased with the results. Whereas blogging encourages me to dig a little deeper into small pockets of knowledge, a commitment to speak for 30-60 minutes on a topic forced me to go very deep into a subject and begin to gain some real expertise. There’s nothing like the fear of looking stupid in front of a group of people to make you hone your skills.
4. Social Networking – Last year was the first time I made a consistent effort to develop and maintain professional relationships outside of my immediate workplace and it has had a profound impact on my professional growth. I’m not talking about the benefits that come from shmoozing my way into opportunities that I’m not qualified for or don’t deserve. I just mean that I’ve noticed that the more time I spend interacting with really smart people, whether through conferences, user groups, blogs, or email, the more new ideas I encounter and the higher expectations I tend to adopt for myself.
5. Automating My Workflow – It takes effort and discipline to invest in your own productivity, especially since it often slows you down in the short term. Traditionally I have been too focused on my short term goals to put much effort into removing inefficiencies in my own work processes. This last year, however, I worked hard to start identifying and streamlining my own needlessly repetitive tasks with the help of tools like ReSharper, WinKey, and SlickRun. I’ve been extremely happy with the results so far and look forward to learning new productivity tricks this year.
6. Taking Professional Risks – Last fall I took a big risk by changing jobs. I had invested almost 5 years at my old job in learning the intricacies of the internal systems and the business domain as well as earning the trust of my co-workers . The idea of starting from scratch was scary. Although there were times when my ego didn’t appreciate becoming a novice again, the rate of my professional growth has skyrocketed from being exposed to new methodologies, domain challenges, codebases, and people.
7. Regularly Experimenting with New Tools – Thanks in part to Scott Hanselman’s tool list, I’ve added more tools and utilities to my developer toolbox this last year than I ever have before and it has dramatically increased my productivity. Some of the new tools that I picked up this last year include ReSharper, SlickRun, PowerShell, MbUnit, FxCop, NDepend, Espresso, JIRA, NCover, WatiN, Firebug, Nant, and Rhino.Mocks.

I have certainly done plenty wrong this past year, but I like to spend time focusing first on the positive aspects of whatever I’m trying to improve. I find it helps me solidify good habits that I may have only accidentally acquired in the first place and will probably lose unless I make a conscious effort to recognize their value.

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