DEV Community: Amrit Singh

Don’t Join the Great Resignation. Find Meaningful Work Instead

Amrit Singh — Thu, 21 Apr 2022 06:05:16 +0000

According to Willis Towers Watson’s 2022 Global Benefits Attitudes Survey, 44% of employees are seeking a change. The other aspect of the situation is there are enough lucrative opportunities in the market for all kinds of professionals.
I have been trying to hire in the last few months. Most candidates have many offers with good salaries and are trying to negotiate to get an even higher pay raise.
Lately quitting a job has become a fashion. A friend of mine is looking out just for the reason that he has been with his current employer now for a couple of years.
I don’t agree with such an attitude. My focus is to find meaningful work, no matter where you find it.

“It is very difficult to have a meaningful life without meaningful work.” — Jim Collins

Finding meaningful work

I have been in the software industry for many years. I see a lot of professionals jumping jobs without clearly knowing what they are going to work on. That is not wise, if you don’t know exactly what you are going to do, you might feel the same suffocation in the new place as well.
If you have freedom at your workplace and you can’t find meaningful work, the problem is you. You might not be looking at the big picture and missing out on new opportunities and places where you can add value.
Adding value in your current workplace or the new one should be your goal. I don’t deny the importance of compensation. Sometimes if you need to switch jobs, be sure what value you are going to add in the new place.

Is it easy to find meaningful work?

It depends on your organization’s work culture, on you, and your definition of meaningful work. If you have an open culture, there are always dozens of places where you can help. Find problems people or you are facing and find a solution, involve others in the process and then move on to the next problem.
To me, any problem that my organization faces is an opportunity to add value. Solving problems, and automating stuff are a few on my list when it comes to meaningful work.

Meaningful work brings you the satisfaction that resignation might not

Growing up I always felt a good designation and a great salary are the only things you need in your work life. After working a few years in the industry, I realized the most important part of work-life is to do great work.
Routine work is tiring whereas exciting work is refreshing. I always felt energetic, when there is great work on my plate. So I am always looking for new problems to solve at my workplace.

A Few Tiny Rituals to Achieve Peak Productivity as a Software Developer

Amrit Singh — Thu, 21 Apr 2022 05:38:35 +0000

Little improvements every day, compound over time

A cup of coffee is something that comes to our minds when we feel sluggish. Coffee wakes one up, but it is not a solution to productivity that we face every day.
It happens quite often that you know the solution but you need to hear it from others. I am no different. We are going to discuss a few small actions or habits that boost your daily productivity to a great extent —

Analyze your achievements at EOD

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.” — Peter Drucker

It starts with introspection. At the end of every day, measure what have you achieved. The idea is how fruitful your day was. Could it have been better? Could you have done more stuff? Could you have done things in a better way?
This is the feedback loop that helps you learn over months. You get to understand the areas where you need to improve. How to improve comes later, first figure out what are you doing right and wrong.

Plan your day

“If you don’t plan your day, someone or something else will.” — Nir Eyal

Once you know how to measure your efficiency and productivity, you need to plan your day to be more efficient and productive.
There are so many distractions these days, social media, videos, news feeds, people, etc. The rectangular device in your pocket is always craving your attention with constant notifications.
So if don’t plan your day, you are letting these distractions plan it for you. At the end of each day after introspecting your day plan the next day.

The right time to have a cup of caffeine

I consume a cup of coffee and a couple of cups of tea every day. A cup of caffeine helps me stay awake and focused on the things I want to do.
A cup of black coffee takes around 8–14 hours to flush out of your body. As part of my daily routine, I like to take a cup of coffee between 11–11:30. We generally have meetings in the morning, then I take a break and have a cup of coffee.
It helps me stay focused on my work, at least I believe so. And it is out of my system before I go to bed at the night. Taking coffee in the evening might disturb your sleep and hence affect your productivity the next day.
So, plan when you want to have your cup of caffeine.

Keep your long term goals in mind

“Never let a short term desire get in the way of long term goal.” — Curtis Martin

Reviewing your long-term goals are regular intervals is required to keep you on track. This ritual has two advantages, it keeps you reminding yourself about your goals and helps you measure your long-term progress.
This goes hand in hand with your daily planning of tasks. A few experts say you should review your long-term goals every day. I suggest starting with at least doing it once a week.

Manage meetings

“The longer the meeting, the less is accomplished.” — Tim Cook

At work, we attend a lot of meetings. They are part of our work-life and important as well. Since the pandemic breakout, with work from home becoming mandatory, the time we spend in meetings has skyrocketed. Meetings over audio/video calls became the only way to connect with coworkers.
These meetings give us a feeling of accomplishment but most of the meetings are long and unnecessary. Learn to keep the meetings short and focused on the agenda. This might save you a lot of time.

Focused coding hours

“Focus on being productive instead of busy.” — Tim Ferris

The idea is to have 2–3 hours of focused work completely away from distractions. There are different kinds of distractions at work — your phone, email, chat, coworkers asking for help, meetings, and many more.
Having dedicated, no distraction and no interruption time helps you achieve more than what you can achieve in a day. Coding requires a dedicated amount of time with no disturbance and no context switching. Give yourselves this time and you will get more done in a short time.

Prioritize your tasks based on the value they bring in

“The key is not to prioritize what's on your schedule but to schedule your priorities.” — Stephen Covey

Prioritize your tasks based on what is important for the organization’s business. We often try to complete whatever is there on our task list without looking at the bigger picture.
Having a sense of which task should be prioritized over what is quite important for the business to move forward.

Take a 3–5 minutes break for every 25 mins work interval

This technique is called Pomodoro Technique. The usual attention span of a human being is of about 25 minutes. So try to maximize your attention span and take a much-needed break after the session of 25 minutes.
I typically use an alarm for each session. This alarm gives you a cue to analyze if you are focusing on the problem at hand or deviating from it. It gives you a chance to get back to the important tasks.

Power nap

I take a nap of around 15 mins on my recliner after lunch to recharge myself. This nap works like garbage collection. Your mind flushes out all the things going on and gives a performance boost.

Wrapping Up

I have incorporated these habits into my life. These habits take time to build. It might take a while before you see their benefits in your work life. But if you keep doing this for a few days you will be more focused, you will be more productive, and most importantly you will have more time at your disposal.

5 Ways to Overcome Writer’s Block as a Technical Writer

Amrit Singh — Thu, 07 Apr 2022 04:08:25 +0000

Simple ways to find topics for your stories

To be a successful technical writer or any kind of writer, you just need consistency. And to be consistent you need to generate new ideas for your articles.
When I started penning down my first blog about a year ago, I took a lot of time to write it. I had the topic but the writing was not easy. After this piece, I had no topics to write on.
I have come a long way from there, I have overcome Writer’s block. I have abundant topics to write on.
In this article, I am going to share a few ways to overcome Writer’s block —

Keep a note of new things you learn at work

At work, we face new challenges every day. And we find solutions to these challenges.
Has it ever occurred to you, there are others who might be facing the same problem as you? Oh yes, for sure. This could be a topic for a technical blog you can write.
I keep a note of all the things I learn at work. These could be the choices you make in terms of language, framework, design, architecture, or process. If you pen down these ideas you will have enough topics to write on.

Workplace dynamics

Post pandemic many of us are working from home, but the dynamics of our workplace still affect us. Affects could be positive or negative. You or others might be taking measures to make things better.
These are great things to write about. It could be about how different teams communicate effectively, how you have reduced the burden of meetings, how you managed a late project, why your workplace is healthy, etc.

Explain basic concepts

As a programmer, you might be under the impression that everyone knows the basic concepts. These are some great topics to write about. I see a lot of successful writers still write about the basics of Python.
There are always people learning basic concepts. We might consider these topics trivial, but they are valuable to a lot of people.

Listicles

Listicles are easy ones to write. You can compile others' work into a listicle.
I would not recommend writing only listicles, but writing a listicle once in a while is a great idea.

Opinions & Advice

Writing my thoughts and opinion on a topic has worked well for me. I have received a few nasty comments but a few of these articles went viral.
Readers like to read others’ perspectives on a certain technology or a problem. This helps them look at technology, process, or a problem from different vantage points.

Final Words

I am not an expert when it comes to writing. I am a newbie, but these kinds of articles have helped me to grow my audience and get some ghostwriting assignments as well.

How to Become a Hyper-Focused Developer and Achieve Your Goals Faster

Amrit Singh — Thu, 07 Apr 2022 04:02:40 +0000

Attention is the only thing you need to manage

“We are what we pay attention to, and almost nothing influences our productivity and creativity as much as the information we’ve consumed in the past” — Chris Bailey

Most of us don’t know how to manage our attention and hence our focus. We drift from our paths and do random things and waste our time.
Time wastage is the consequence of not managing our focus well. We try to manage our time, but what we really need is to manage our attention.
I am writing this story from a perspective of a software developer. As a programmer, I have wasted a lot of my time thinking about things, ideas, concepts, and consuming useless content.
To change your relationship with time you need to learn to manage your focus.

Create time for yourselves and your gigs

You must have heard people talk about side hustles you can do as a software developer. A few years ago, I believed I would pursue a side hustle if I have time.
To create time for yourselves and to do something extra for yourselves, you need to focus on the problems at hand and finish them up in time. This creates abundance of time for you.

Timebox all activities

Define a time for all your activities, starting from waking up to your workout to meals to meetings to uninterrupted coding sessions to phone calls and sleep.
I follow timeboxing, I put all my activities of the day in Google Calendar. I was introduced to this idea by a great book called Indistractable by Nir Eyal. Nir recommends — timebox everything. You need to allocate time to your family and friends in your calendar as well.
I highly recommend getting rid of unnecessary meetings and timeboxing the unavoidable ones. Finish them in time.
Have uninterrupted work sessions for at least 2–3 hours a day. Let your teammates know about your schedule so that they don’t interrupt you.

Plan your day and analyze it at EOD

“If you don’t PLAN YOUR DAY, somebody is going to plan it for you. The social media companies, the news, your boss, your kids, somebody is going to take up the time in your day unless you decide in advance HOW YOU WANT TO SPEND YOUR TIME.” — Nir Eyal

You might feel that you are busy throughout the day, you have a lot of work. But once you start planning and analyzing your day, you will come to a conclusion that you have enough time to do a lot more.
At the end of the day, if you analyze your achievements of the day, you get to know what you are doing wrong and how you should plan your next day. This is a continuous process, and you improve your planning and execution over time.

Take breaks — Pomodoro Technique

When it comes to managing your attention span, Pomodoro Technique helps you to a great extent.
You typically break your work into 25 minutes sessions of work and 5 minutes of break. The idea behind the technique is the usual attention span a human can get is around 25 minutes.
And if you put an alarm at 25 minutes intervals, you get a cue to analyze if you are focusing on the problem at hand or deviating from it. It gives you a chance to get back to the tasks that are important.

Continuous Learning

“The World is fast changing and until you learn to adapt and adjust to stand out from the masses, you will fade out into oblivion.” — Bernard Kelvin Clive

In a world where new technology breaks the barrier every day, you need to learn new skills more frequently than ever. Technologies that were booming a few years ago are not phasing out.
To keep up with this fast-changing world you need to cope and keep learning new skills and technologies.

Parting Words

These are the mantras that I follow and have helped me to focus on my work and to build 2–3 side hustles along with my 9–5.
It might take a while before you see significant changes and benefits in your work life or life in general. But if you keep doing this for a few days you will be more focused, will achieve more, and most importantly you will have more time at your disposal.