S4E1 - Best Career advice? Learner Log!
Show Transcript:
Intro
A big part of my work is mentoring, guidance and career advice, and I get flooded with questions at events, meetings and coffee chats. Amongst the many differant things that I get asked, the one I get asked most is:
What is the 1 single thing you recommend that I can do that will have the biggest effect on my career? I always given the same answer:
Start a learner log!
What is a Learner Log?
A work or learner log is basically like a coding journal that you keep. It is, in my opinion, essential - as it allows you to track your progress, wins, and also act a bit like a brain dump for the various things you do/learn through your work and career.
Regardless of where you are your career, it is an indispensable tool. If you don't have one, I recommend you start like literally right now! Even if you're 20 years into the game, it's never too late to start on it. Think of it like planting a tree; the best time to do it was 20 years ago, but the 2nd best time is now.
And it's super easy! Everyday, jot down what you did. If you did anything extra like squash a bug, make something cool, or learn a new technique - you'll jot that down too in a seperate note. Easy!
Let's dig into why it's so valuable:
Progress and Win Tracking
Log KPIs, Milestones, Deadlines and deliverables. Great to see your progress over time, to reminder yourself of what you've achieved. Fantastic to dispell imposter syndrome! Also extra handy at compensation time, being able to whip out a stack of evidence of all the great things that you've accomplished.
Identify the things you're building
Helps you understand clearly if you're being assigned work correctly for your role. If you're a full-stack dev but 90% of your day-to-day work is crunching database reports, then you know you need to have a chat with your manager.
Identify the patterns you're using
When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Get a real grasp on what you're using (or over-using) and then you can make qualified decisions about where you can find improvement.
Handy Lookback
List bugs you solved. Literally just paste in the error message or bug, and then paste in how you solved it. The next time you or a coworker comes across the same issue, you have the solution at hand!
List techniques or design patterns you learn
As you learn tricks, techniques, find interesting snippets, etc. this is a great place to store those for later use.
2nd Brain for your role
How to build the app, how to start it, how to run the CI/CD, how to manually deploy, How to add new users, how to do back deploys, How to configure Features, Where to get tokens, who in your team is responsible for what, etc.
Everything you learn about your role can be jotted down here, and referred back to.
This can be something you later share with colleagues, something you use as the basis for onboaridng, or you can dissect infor as you go into documentation guides that end up in your internal wiki, sharepoint, confluence, or whatever.
How do I make a learner log?
OneNote, Evernote, Google Keep, Notion, whatever. Pick your poison and stick with it. Just make sure that it's attached to a personal email account and not tied to any work accounts. You'd hate to lose access to your hard work!
Don't overthink the structure too much. People get lost in overengineering folders and categories. Just bop pages/notes down and over time a order/division will reveal itself to you.
For your daily work, always put the date as the title. For bugs, techniques, etc. you don't have to be too picky, but do make sure you TAG them with the right categories, tags/hashtags. You really want to be able to search for typescript and design patterns to get all design patterns examples you have in Typescript. Don't use a shorthand, like TSDP that you wouldn't typically use, as you'll end up forgetting about it and not having clear/direct access to good notes.
Note on work code, passwords, priviledged information:
As this will be a personal account, don't make the mistake of storing non-personal information. Don't copy your employer's code, credential, docs or secrets. If you need examples of code, etc. for showing bug-fixes or techniques, you can always create anonimized samples fairly quickly.
Bonus Tip
We talk a lot about having an online presence. Your learner log can be the source of that! Take what you've done and convert it to blogposts, youtube videos, or any other form of online content, and post it on your accounts.
This helps cement your authority in the craft, as people will see you showing how you fixed bugs, or your examples of techniques, patterns, etc. in your chosen language or framework. This builds you reputation, and can be the very thing that other devs in the industry loook to when they are in the same situation. Nice!
Summary
If there's one piece of advice I could give to every junior, senior, young or old developer out there, it's start a learner log. It can grow into an invaluable resource for your not only your current role, but every role and indeed for your entire career if you keep investing time into it!