Five Steps to Becoming a Better Devsigner

Original Post: Five Steps to Becoming a Better Developer

Link to talk

Links/Projects Mentioned

• Where I work
• Open Source Project LostGrid
• Weekly To Do List + Retrospectives
• Code Mission Statement
• Jekyll + GitHub Blog
• CSS-Tricks Front-end Conferences of 2016
  • You could talk at one of these. 😉
• Robert Krulwich’s speech on storytelling: Tell Me A Story
  • I mistakenly said this was the commencement address at Stanford but I mixed that speech with the speech he gave at Caltech. Sorry for the mixup.
• RadioLab Podcast
  • This American Life

Great thoughts from the discussion:

• Mentors are an amazing way to learn, get feedback and improve in all areas of your life. Seek them out.
• Be a mentor!
  • No really…you can be a mentor now!
• Regarding “Checking your ego at the door”:
  • It was suggested that I should define “check you ego at the door” a little more. He shared, and I’m paraphrasing, “There was an expert (and I mean a real expert) in our group for weeks before we found out. Weeks went by when they could have shared their hard–earned expertise from their prestigious role but were to humble to share. We lost out as a group because they were too shy to share what they had, which was a lot, and we all were bummed.” Being humble does not mean shoving your skills aside and being silent.
  • C.S. Lewis put it well: “True humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less.”

I made a full reading list here.

That List at the end:

1. Ask someone who you are
2. Identify your wins & loses
3. Have a mission for yourself
4. Start blogging + talk
5. Check your ego at the door

Some of those quotes from the slides:

We all have something to offer.

The greatest enemy of the best is a lot of good.

The best way to learn is to teach. - {someone}