On self-development and efficiency at work
Hi, I'm Phuong. I'm a funny guy who spend a lot of time around digital devices. If you are reading these lines, I'm either probably playing some video games or learning something from the internet.
Self-development:
Things you want to do
Things you want to learn
Things you want to be involved with
Work efficiency:
How fast can you deliver
The relative quality of your work compared to your co-workers in the vicinities (think of team level, organization level)
What is often misunderstood (from my experience): these 2 collides. But it is not, unless you are lucky. Otherwise, let's consider these scenarios normal:
You are interested in database internals and your work require you to build a React Web using Claude.
You want to implement a cool white paper, but your work require you to spend the whole day to communicate with stakeholders to integrate a new system that only require 3 lines of code change.
You can make a feature/API more sophisticated, the kind of architecture that are being taught in every system design books. Don't do it. Implement just enough to get by, same as it was implemented everywhere else in your company, save the scaling capability for next sprint/next half OKR.
That's normal and that's life. 9-18 you are paid to work for others's dreams. The stakeholders that you are complaining about, he or she is also probably hate this as much as you do. Instead of being hatred so much, let's coordinate and get the work done. Leave your fancy optimization idea behind, leave the rocket-science RFC that you want to do behind, do it for the cash.
What about the things that your are eager to get involved with? Wake up a bit earlier, find some spare time here and there. There is no magic formula for this. If you want more you just have to invest more.
