| My continuing critique of posts like these is that they miss far more fundamental keys to "leveling up": energy level and psychological issues. I bring this up because in my experience the people who outright fail to "level up" and are actively seeking out posts like this often lack the fundamental ability to follow through on any advice they're given, regardless of whether they agree with it or how good it is. Perhaps the best example is side projects. The first thing you need isn't a good idea, "soft skills", or even being particularly skilled at coding. The first thing you need is enough time and energy to keeping going after an 8+ hour workday, combined with enough confidence to push forward. For most people that means getting in shape, eating healthy, getting a full night's sleep every night, developing a growth mindset of some variety, dealing with anxiety, making day-to-day tasks more efficient, etc. Otherwise all the good advice in the world is only going to lead to fragmented, half-baked sputtering efforts that ignore the root of the problem. As for the people who have all that stuff taken care of, then I guess this information is of some value if it's the first time they're seeing it. Otherwise it's largely a rehash of other innumerable professional development blog posts. Which doesn't mean it's bad, but the people who really need the help probably can't use it, and the people who can use it likely don't need it. |
Finding the motivation/discipline to keep up the conscious effort of improving at anything is the hardest task of all.