Become a Better You
How to Improve Yourself
Improve Work EfficiencyKnow your goals, Focus on Your Goals
Take on more responsibility
Build a good long term relationship with your colleagues, classmates...
Expand your social circle proactively
More, more, more!!!
Think more
Do more, work more, learn more,
Help more people, - your teammates etc.
Problem solving skills
Think deeper
Always seek whether there are alternative and better ways/solutions.
Make plan, short-term and long-term, and follow it.
Make short-term and long-term to-do-list.
Motivate yourself.
Evaluate yourself properly.
Recognize your strengths and weaknesses. Strive hard to overcome your weaknesses.
Be brave and overcome your fears.
First Thing First
Identify priorities, and do the most important things first.
Do things you promise first.
Do things you cooperate with others first.
Make well preparation.
Manage your time, and make most of your time.
Keep things well organized
This includes your notes, your books, you job, and your life.
Taking notes and organizing them well
Take notes for everything, new ideas/solutions you capture, mistakes you make and lesson you learn, the task/paper you are trying to do.
Writing these down is a good opportunity to make you think, learn and improve.
Know your task
Know the result expected, and figure out how to finish it perfectly, and quickly.
Observe and learn
Learn from others, their knowledge, their merits, their good habits, and the ways they think and solve problems.
Keep learning
Learn the skill of learning.
Learn time management; learn to do things more efficiently.
Learn how to train your brain, and make good use of your brain.
Learn how to think bigger, think innovatively.
Never make same/similar mistakes twice.
Nobody never mistakes, the difference is that whether we can learn from our mistakes, and tried hard to avoid making same/similar mistakes again.
The most efficient way is to recall and write down the mistakes we made, and the lessons we learned.
These can be anything, including the bug we don't find in our code, why we don't find an alternative and better solution,
Challenge yourself, and move out of your comfort zone.
Personal Character
Be Ambitious about your career, your goal.
Brave
Be Reliable and keep your promises.
Keep a positive attitude.
Keep the sense of curiosity.
Be humble
The people who are best at programming are the people who realize how small their brains are. They are humble. The people who are the worst at programming are the people who refuse to accept the fact that their brains aren’t equal to the task. Their egos keep them from being great programmers.
The more humble you are, the faster you’ll improve.
Experiment and Prototype
Experiment and Prototype with small programs to verigy your thoughts, to learn things you don't know.
Analyze and plan before you act
Develop the habit of writing a class in pseudocode/thinking and designing it before coding it and carefully reading the code before compiling/testing it, for instance.
Intellectual Honesty
1. Refusing to pretend you’re an expert when you’re not
2. Readily admitting your mistakes
3. Clearly understanding your programs - not just change the code and see whether it works
4. Providing realistic status reports to the stakeholders
5. Providing realistic schedule estimates and holding your ground when management asks you to adjust them
Make a commitment to professional development
Enlightened laziness
Example: Writing a tool to do the unpleasant task so that you never have to do the task again
When you first learn something, learn it the right way. When you first do it, actively think about it and do it in a good way.
Don't find excuse for postponing, do it, and do it now.
Form good habits, and get rid of bad ones.
Replace a bad habit by developing new good habits.
Be professional, anytime, everywhere.
Remember that you are always being evaluated, by your boss, by your colleagues, by your room mate.
The Seven Secrets of How to Think Like a Rocket Scientist
Free your imagination
Don't be afraid of looking silly or stupid.
Work on the Big Picture
Keep your big picture in mind when solving your problems. The big picture will help you take the next step—it will give you direction.
Aim High
Don't underestimate your limits.
BS, Brainstorm
Trial and error, of hypo-thetical solution generation and elimination, of brainstorming, and of judging
The goal of Brainstorm is to create as many ideas (the good, the bad, and the ugly) as you can, to make your list of possibilities as long as possible.
Create Desire (to know/work/study)
Familiar with your issues, and Depict your problem/question as detailed as possible
Usually in this way, u can get the answer on your own.
Sleep on It
Before sleep, or go out for lunch, or go home, force yourself to carefully read the assignment and struggle hard to really understand what the problem is and what the answer might entail.
Then later when you return to your problem, it would seem much easier.
Judge
Get Real
Simulate It
Run a Thought Experiment
Know Your Limits
Weigh Ideas
Know your fear and Beat it
Ask More Questions
Conquer your fear
Expose Your Ignorance and Confront Your Ignorance
Ask Dumb/Stupid Questions
Ask Big Questions
Ask “What If? What else?"
Ask Good Questions.
Ask One More Question
Check
Swallow your pride and Prove Yourself Wrong
Inspect for Defects (Quality control)
Have a Backup Plan
Do a Sanity Test
Ask yourself - Does this make sense?
Check Again
Know the Risks - clearly and really
Question Your Assumptions
Simplify
KISS - Keep It Simple, Stupid
Don't make it any more complicated than it already is.
Draw a Picture
Look at the Little Picture (Divide and Conquer)
Break a problem down to its simplest component parts
The answer may be very simple.
The simplest explanation is probably the correct one.
Optimize
Be Efficient, Improve your productivity
Minimize the Cost
Minimize the Time
Know your goals, and make tradeoffs
Make It Faster, Better, Cheaper (But Not All Three!)
Know When Bigger Is Better
Not always bigger is better.
Make Small Improvements Constantly
Do
Just Start to Do Something
Learn by Doing
Sharpen Your Axe
Start with the best tools, and keep improving your tools as you go along.
Correct It on the Way
You will always make mistakes, making a correction will not be an admission of failure but a reflection of courage, wisdom and foresight.
Don’t Ignore Trends
Work on Your Average Performance
Learn from Your Mistakes
Resources
The Seven Secrets of How to Think Like a Rocket Scientist
