soft skills for life (Career)

Career

Taking action
❂ Think about a business that has a product or service they offer. How do they differentiate
and advertise that product or service?
❂ If you had to describe the specific service you can provide a perspective
employer or client in a single sentence, what would it be?
❂ How does treating your career like a business affect the way you
❂ Do your work
❂ Handle finances
❂ Look for a job or new clients

Taking action
❂ Sit down and write out at least one major goal for your career.
❂ Break down that major goal into smaller goals that correspond to
❂ Months
❂ Weeks
❂ Days
❂ Write down your major goal where you can see it each day to remind you of what
you’re striving for.

Taking action
❂ In a single day at your work, keep track of every encounter you have with another
human being. At the end of the day, count up how many interactions you had during
that day, including answering emails or phone calls.
❂ Get a copy of the book How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie.
The book is in public domain, so you can find it very cheap. Read it—more
than once.
❂ The next time you’re being sucked into an argument, think about ways you can
turn it around. For an interesting test, try just giving in. In fact, don’t just give in,
but emphatically take your opponent’s side. The outcome of doing this may surprise
you.

Taking action
❂ Even if you aren’t actively looking for a job right now, make a list of companies
that you’d potentially like to work for and who you know at those companies.
❂ If there are companies on your list that you’d like to work for, but you don’t know
anyone at those companies, come up with a plan to meet at least one person
working at one of those companies and build a relationship with them.
❂ Find at least one local user group in your area and attend a meeting. Introduce
yourself to as many people as possible.

Taking action
❂ Try to come up with a list of software developers you know or have heard of who
fit each of the three categories.
❂ If you’re interested in becoming an independent consultant or entrepreneur, set
up a meeting with someone you know who is already on that career path and ask
him or her what it’s like. (Too many developers jump in without knowing what
they’re getting themselves into.)

Taking action
❂ List all the different kinds of software developer specialties you can think of. Go
from broad to specific and see how specific you can get.
❂ What is your current specialty? If you don’t have one, think about what area of
software development you could specialize in.
❂ Go to a popular job search website and look for jobs in your market for your specialty.
Try to get an idea of whether or not further specialization would be beneficial
to you or limit your choices too much.

Taking action
❂ Take some time to think about what kind of environment you prefer working in.
What company size matches your ideal working environment?
❂ Make a list of companies in your area or companies you have worked for and
decide which category each fits into.

9ch
Taking action
❂ What is one way you can take on more responsibility at your current job right
now?
❂ How visible are you to your current boss or manager? What is one concrete
action you can take in the next week to become more visible?
❂ What are you doing to educate yourself? Decide what would be the most valuable
thing to educate yourself on and create a plan to get that education over the
next year.

ch11
Taking action
❂ Calculate exactly how much money you’ll need to earn each month to live. You
might be surprised to find out how high it is right now. If you want to get “free”
quicker, you’ll need to figure out a way to reduce that amount so that your side
business will need to bring in less income.
❂ Start tracking your time every day at work. Get an idea of how you're spending
your time currently each day. Now, figure out how much of that time is actual productive
time where you're actually doing real hard productive work—you might be
surprised by the results.

ch15
Taking action
❂ Take an honest self-assessment. After learning about these three challenges, how
do you think you'd deal with time management, self-motivation, and loneliness?
❂ If you're working from home or planning on working from home, come up with a
schedule that you'll stick to each week. Decide what your working hours will be
and what days you'll work