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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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Get Acquainted With What Holds You Back

What will hold you back from achieving what you want to achieve in your future? How do you imagine your future, and what do you assume will keep you from going further? In today's episode, we'll do a visualization exercise to help understand the assumptions we make about our own problems and flaws, and why avoidance isn't helping us grow.

Published: 12/12/2022
Length: ~11m
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How Ordering Your Events in A Day Can Matter

Practical application of psychology can help us understand how to order our days more consciously. In this episode, we talk about priming and regression to the mean, and how they could impact our work as engineers and managers.

Published: 12/9/2022
Length: ~13m
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Don't Fear AI Taking the Coding Jobs (Fixed Audio)

AI and code generation will change your work... But it's time for us to find the path forward.

Published: 12/7/2022
Length: ~5m
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Don't Fear AI Taking the Coding Jobs

AI and code generation will change your work... But it's time for us to find the path forward.

Published: 12/5/2022
Length: ~5m
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Focus On Activities With Asymmetrical Upside

Focus on things that provide asymmetrical upside. This is a personalized ROI evaluation. This is how you invest your time wisely.

Published: 11/30/2022
Length: ~15m
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Misjudging Others Attention On Us

We imagine others are more interested in our mistakes or self-conscious areas than they are. We also imagine they pay little to no attention to us at most other times. Both of these are errors in judgment.

Published: 11/28/2022
Length: ~5m
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An Outsider Exercise in Gratitude

We adapt to our circumstances. This dampens our capacity for gratitude, as we become less aware of what we are experiencing the longer we have the same experiences. In today's episode, we use a version of an exercise from Julia Galef's excellent book, The Scout Mindset, to help us break out of our status quo thinking and recognize what is in front of us.

Published: 11/24/2022
Length: ~9m
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You Know The Right Decision, Now Reduce The Friction

You know how to determine what would be a good decision. You have the tools and the reasoning; if you find yourself still not making the right decision, you may be tempted to focus on the "left side" - increasing the energy, gumption, reasoning, or motivation. Instead, focus on the barriers - the friction.

Published: 11/21/2022
Length: ~10m
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Using Observational Techniques to Find Your Personal Values

Determining your values isn't just about fluff. This is what you personally care about. In this episode, we talk about two ways to use direct observation as a tool for determining your values, and why those values are not just buzzwords.

Published: 11/16/2022
Length: ~19m
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Avoid Defining Success Outside Your Locus of Control

Focus on what you can control. Create incentives and language and internal narrative that produces the right actions within your locus of control. Avoid attaching your definition of success to things outside of your control.

Published: 11/14/2022
Length: ~13m
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The Toxic Laziness of Overwork Culture

Don't buy in to the lie that you have to overwork to succeed. Not only is it not true, it's also dangerous - and the opposite is more accurate.

Published: 11/10/2022
Length: ~18m
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Start With Precise Communication

In today's episode, I provide a simple coaching tip on improved communication for software engineers. It's simple: always make precision explicit, and layer context. Start with precision, then create meaning on top.

Published: 11/7/2022
Length: ~10m
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The Error of Discounting the Unexpected

We don't think about the unexpected as a category of possible outcomes. This leads us to assign overestimated probabilities to things that are front of mind, and discount the likelihood of things we don't expect. This may lead us to prepare for expected events without consideration for what we'll do in the face of the unexpected.

Published: 11/2/2022
Length: ~13m
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Looking at What Wasn't Done

Look closer at the things that don't happen. Evaluate the options you never considered. When you are looking back, don't just judge based on actions and outcomes - look at the quality of decisions through the lens of information, and wonder: was there a better decision? Was there an option that was nearly as good, but this one was better?

Published: 10/31/2022
Length: ~9m
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Success is Born From Luck and Action

You can't wait for luck to strike, but you also won't always get what you deserve. Both of these are true - so, go make luck happen for you!

Published: 10/26/2022
Length: ~7m
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Build Environments That Produce Habits

Habits aren't built on their own. They are the result of environments. Reduce friction and create a positive reinforcement loop, and the habits will follow.

Published: 10/24/2022
Length: ~9m
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Design Your Low Stakes Environment As A Mirror of Your High Stakes Environment

What happens in high-stakes environments? Is the learning you do in your low-stakes environment actually helping you when you have skin in the game?

Published: 10/20/2022
Length: ~12m
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Better Goals - Deriving Values from Personal Investment and Risk Tolerance

Having trouble setting goals? Take a look at a different angle with the guided exercise in today's episode.

Published: 10/18/2022
Length: ~11m
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Better Goals - Finding Cohesion Between Your Long and Short Term Goals

Our goals usually take two forms: what we want to accomplish, and who we want to be. When we can align these things, we find cohesion in our goals, giving us more clarity and purpose.

Published: 10/12/2022
Length: ~12m
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Better Goals - Two Guidelines for Better Outcomes

Two guidelines for better goal setting. First, goals don't stand alone. Second, ranges often beat arbitrary points.

Published: 10/10/2022
Length: ~11m
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Developer Tea was a part of Spec and is hosted by Jonathan Cutrell, engineering manager at Guild Education.