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I started Developer Tea in 2015 to help engineers find clarity, perspective, and purpose in regular short bursts of high-value content.

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Friday Refill: What Are Your Ideals?

What are your ideals? For many people, ideals are fragile. The moment we see a hero fall, our own lives are immediately thrown into a state of confusion. Instead of having fragile ideals, we should explore the underlying motivations, and set ourselves up for dynamic ideals that don't break easily.

Published: 8/13/2021
Length: ~7m
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4 Questions To Understand Your Long Term Career Trajectory

Great questions trigger thought and further questions. In this episode, I pose 4 questions (and a bit of homework) to help you get a handle on where your career is headed. Whether you are in a transition point, at the beginning of your career, or in a senior role, these questions can help point you down the pathway to better understanding and clarity for where you stand today.

Published: 8/11/2021
Length: ~12m
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Joel Beasley from Modern CTO, Part Two

Joel Beasley is the host of Modern CTO, a podcast with guests coming from IBM, Microsoft, Nasa, Reddit, and hundreds of others. Joel and I have wanted to have this discussion for a long time, and we finally found the right overlap to do it! You can learn more about Modern CTO at https://moderncto.io and listen to this episode in the alternate podcast universe here. Thanks for joining me on Developer Tea, Joel!

Published: 8/9/2021
Length: ~28m
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Friday Refill: Give Tomorrow-You Advice from Today

Happy Friday everyone! Today we talk about fighting the inertia of the daily slide into habits. How many days have seemed to slip through your fingers? One way to combat this is to develop a "meta-behavior" that short-circuits your other habits. Write advice to yourself from today, for tomorrow. This is best done at the end of the day, or in preparation for the week ahead.

Published: 8/6/2021
Length: ~5m
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Joel Beasley from Modern CTO

Joel Beasley is the host of Modern CTO, a podcast with guests coming from IBM, Microsoft, Nasa, Reddit, and hundreds of others. Joel and I have wanted to have this discussion for a long time, and we finally found the right overlap to do it! You can learn more about Modern CTO at https://moderncto.io and listen to this episode in the alternate podcast universe here. Thanks for joining me on Developer Tea, Joel!

Published: 8/5/2021
Length: ~30m
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Uncomfortable Silence: What If You Do Nothing?

What if the best thing you could do was nothing? Not indefinitely, of course - but often, we intervene in the world when the right choice is to do nothing. This is uncomfortable because it is unfamiliar, but might be the most critical change you can make in your thought process.

Published: 8/3/2021
Length: ~11m
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Friday Refill: Imaginary Comparisons

Comparison is an incredibly important tool. But most of the time, the comparisons we are making are imaginary - even the ones that seem real. In this episode we'll talk about why we should be mindful of this, and in some instances, take measures to debias our decisions.

Published: 7/30/2021
Length: ~7m
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Implicit Hypotheses

Are you acting on impulse? How would you know? One door to understanding this "acting without thinking" is to investigate our hypotheses. Implicit hypotheses are expressed as instances of our beliefs. What implicit hypotheses are you relying on today?

Published: 7/28/2021
Length: ~16m
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Model Manager - What We Don't Manage

Model Manager episodes of Developer Tea are dedicated to helping engineering managers find models of thinking that improve their approach to management. Great managers don't attempt, in vain, to control the actions of others. Great managers take advantage of the unique parts of being a human: that they can self-improve through learning and change, and they can create environments that encourage others to do the same.

Published: 7/26/2021
Length: ~13m
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Friday Refill: Waiting and Replaying

What are you waiting on? What are you replaying? It doesn't have to only be anxiety that takes you out of this moment. You may be looking forward to something exciting, or remembering a positive experience. But what are you missing right now?

Published: 7/23/2021
Length: ~7m
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Reframing Discipline and Elastic Habits

Discipline is not about punishment or punctuality. It's about perseverance in the face of changing circumstances. And it's critical to your success as an engineer.

Published: 7/21/2021
Length: ~10m
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Model Manager: Human Behavior is the Primary Output of Engineering Processes

Model Manager episodes of Developer Tea are dedicated to helping engineering managers find models of thinking that improve their approach to management. Processes create uniform approaches and uniform outputs. But what is the output you should care about the most? In this episode, we'll discuss why human behavior is the primary and most critical output of any process.

Published: 7/19/2021
Length: ~17m
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Friday Refill: Focusing On Mastery Will Not Limit Your Options

You don't have to choose to be a generalist to have career security. If you pursue mastery, you will be building skill-acquisition at the deepest levels, and picking up skills that are ancillary to that master-set. Don't follow the latest trend - develop mastery.

Published: 7/16/2021
Length: ~8m
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Compounding Time In Your Favor

We all have 24 hours in a day. How can you compound your time? In many ways, this is what "spend it wisely" means. In this episode we classify different types of decisions and actions, and provide a reminder that direction is ultimately the most critical thing to align.

Published: 7/14/2021
Length: ~19m
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The Bowl of Mediocrity

If you are progressing slowly in your career, it might be because you are working in the bowl of mediocrity. This is where you are taking very little risk, but are also disconnected from the fundamentals of your business or role. In today's episode, I challenge you to work on the edges of this bowl instead of the middle.

Published: 7/12/2021
Length: ~15m
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Friday Refill - Stay Mindful During Phases of Execution

The execution phase of any work you do is where you find the most satisfaction. But it's possible that you aren't finding flow because you have a broken working process. It's difficult to stop working and fix the process, and especially difficult to balance fixing process with actually being productive. In this episode, we'll discuss this dichotomy and the practice of staying mindful during execution.

Published: 7/9/2021
Length: ~8m
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Step One Always Goes On Your Calendar

Everyone has the tendency to procrastinate. Is there something you're putting off? It seems simple, but finding the first step and putting it on your calendar in as much detail as possible is a proven way to break through the barrier of inaction.

Published: 7/8/2021
Length: ~8m
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The Tension Between Purpose and Mindfulness

Should you live every day like it's your last? What about preparing for the future? Chasing your goals and dreams? How can you both be mindful of the present moment and plan for the future? We don't have every answer to that question, but we'll discuss the tension on today's episode.

Published: 7/6/2021
Length: ~12m
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Friday Refill: Intuition Over Memorization

There's too much to remember. Instead, integrate that information. You don't need to memorize everything. Develop your intuition.

Published: 7/2/2021
Length: ~9m
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Local and Global Rationality

When two smart people or groups disagree, what is happening? Sometimes one is plainly wrong about the facts. But more often than not, these two people are arguing from a local rationale. We'll talk about local vs global rationale in this episode and how they apply to your job as an engineer or manager.

Published: 7/1/2021
Length: ~16m
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Developer Tea was a part of Spec and is hosted by Jonathan Cutrell, engineering manager at Guild Education.