The New Years Resolution That Changed My Career

I made a New Years resolution about five years ago to read at least one technical article in full every day.

I seemed to already read a lot for my coding career in general, how can one not? But I was, and still am, a notorious skimmer. I am easily distracted and often don't truly read what I am reading.

So one year I decided to truly read articles online in full, and commit to it. I eventually fell off from the every day part of the resolution, but in getting involved I just learned so much—not just about the code, but about my career and the software industry in general. I learned about how blogging keeps the networked learning happening, and eventually it really did lead me to building this website, dev.to.

I think of New Years resolutions as both corny and invaluable. It is a great time of year to reflect, look ahead, and identify the nudges you need.

It's January 2nd, and not too late to adopt truly reading as a goal. I am making it one of my resolutions again this year. My other resolutions include asking for help more often, and communicating my routine to others in order to set expectations.

Hope this helps somebody out there.

Comments

[Ryan Smith]

That is a good one, I think we are in the "age of skimming" where people obtain information through titles and descriptions rather than reading the content in its entirety. I think the sheer amount of information available online can be overwhelming. Instead of going in-depth on one thing, we skim a variety of things to make sure we get it all. There is also the reason of "I don't have time" that we all tell ourselves, but articles usually take around five minutes to read (or have an "X minute read" indicator). I know I have that time to spare and I'm sure others do as well, we just need to focus our efforts a little more.

[Ben Halpern]

Yep, and I think there's a lot of value in skimming, or even just keeping plugged into the headlines.

For example, if you're floating around JavaScript land, you can kind of pay attention to the headlines and see some trends relating to TypeScript, maybe Svelte, React Hooks, etc. There's value in staying tuned into the headlines, but if you don't have the discipline to go in depth as well, you really don't know much of anything at the end of the day.

[Jean-Michel 🕵🏻‍♂️ Fayard]

@ben there should be a serenity prayer for skimming vs really reading

God, grant me
Serenity to set aside the things that are not valuable to me right now,
Courage to deeply read what I had intended to read,
And wisdom to keep those two activities separate.

(personally I'm still struggling)

[Paweł Kowalski]

Another one is "multitasking" to save time. I hate this so much... the number of times i had to repeat myself, over and over, because people on video call are doing something "in the background" made me skip 99% of meetings altogether - its just pure waste of time.

Anyone who thinks he/she is good at multitasking is just plain wrong. Do one thing, but do it good, instead of doing 3 things badly.

[Ben Sinclair]

That is a good one, I think we are in the "age of skimming"

I literally read the first line of this post and scrolled down to the comments.

[John Peters]

Thanks Ben, for this website!!!

Its 5 times better for learning, than on Stackoverflow (in my opinion).

Best of all, there's no Nazi moderators like you know who.

[Jakob Attkinson]

SO and dev have, IMO, different ideas behind them and they can co-exist in the same eco system.
For example, I'm using SO exclusively during working hours, however, I'm only browsing and reading dev.to during my free time.

It's mostly about the needs, less about the preferences

[John Peters]

You're right. Maybe I'm a bit harsh on SO, but after 10 years I decided not to post questions any longer. The reason was the moderator's attitude.

Dev.To community is nice! And the expertise here is wonderful.

[Jakob Attkinson]

Give it time ☺️

[Zahid Jabbar]

Thank you for sharing this.
I'm making this resolution of reading one technical article in full every day!💪

👉2020 is going to be an amazing year!

[Ben Halpern]

Heck yeah!

[Swarup Kumar Mahapatra]

In today's world of "deliver fast" and "full stack" expectations, Software Engineers don't have time to hone their skills in one particular technology. Hence the habit of skimming and reading tips/tricks is more prevalent.I am guilty of it.

[Omar Gaston Chalas]

Wow, it seems you were talking to me. I do this often, I just read a little of the articles just to know what they are about. But today I will change my mindset and focus on reading and fully understanding what I am reading.

Thanks Ben, this new challenge has been added to my New Year Resolution list.

[ItsASine (Kayla)]

My "resolution" of sorts is to have my to-read list empty by the end of the year, so reading about 5 articles a day. Though I'm breaking it down monthly to slowly ramp up. Like, yesterday I played Stardew Valley and read 2, which is good enough for January.

My dev.to Reading List is up to 1890 at this moment. So yeah... need to chip away at that. I'm not making a distinction between "articles" and #discuss, since there's super valuable stuff in the comments that shouldn't be penalized for not being a part of a full post. Skimming is also allowed since I may not remember why I thought something was worth saving 2 years ago so it might not be super important now :)

[Jakob Attkinson]

Can you show us an example of technical article you mentioned in the introduction?

I'm trying to figure out how to better curate what I'm reading and only choose those articles that provide value to me. However, it's hard to know unless I have a couple of examples to guide myself

[Davide Bellone]

That's similar to the 30ArticlesForNovember challenge I made, well, last November! It's really helpful, and it's even better when you have a look at other articles from the same author: you will discover pure gold!

[Mike Healy]

I like this.

I partially blame the skimming habit on the proliferation of articles that begin with two completely pointless paragraphs. Not such an issue on dev.to of course, but elsewhere they are a menace.

[Richard Lewis]

Thanks for sharing, just the little bit of motivation I need to really thinking about my 2020 resolution.

[leob]

Same for me, all too often I just skim and don't have the patience to read and truly grok the details in a technical article ... bad habit.

[sibi]

Thanks for the writing @ben . I made a resolution last year to contribute more open source works. When I say 'contribute', I really want to understand and learn from other codebases. And I can proudly say that I have a rough understanding of dev.to codebase and have made a contribution too. This year I focus more towards on continuing that journey and come out of my comfort zone. I am already excited about that 😀