Have side projects of varying sizes / timeframes. Read a lot (books, more dev.to articles, other blogs... Twitter is your friend). Listen to podcasts. Experiment with new languages / frameworks / tools. Contribute to open source. Whatever 'curiosity' looks like for you, do it. Don't leave your craft at work.
That being said...
Know when to walk away
Don't hesitate to ditch a problem that's seriously frustrating you. Chances are you'll come back tomorrow and solve it in 5 minutes. Don't sacrifice the long-term love of your craft and drive yourself nuts over short-term bugs. To quote Rework, "ASAP is poison."
Speaking of your craft...
Software engineering is a craft. Treat it as such.
Learn to write Clean Code. Use TDD. Get really comfortable with the tools you use every day. You'll save yourself and your team loads of time and effort, and generally feel like a bad@$$ knowing that you're good at your job.
It's smart to ask questions like this as a junior dev, when your habits are still relatively malleable!
Get curious
Have side projects of varying sizes / timeframes. Read a lot (books, more dev.to articles, other blogs... Twitter is your friend). Listen to podcasts. Experiment with new languages / frameworks / tools. Contribute to open source. Whatever 'curiosity' looks like for you, do it. Don't leave your craft at work.
That being said...
Know when to walk away
Don't hesitate to ditch a problem that's seriously frustrating you. Chances are you'll come back tomorrow and solve it in 5 minutes. Don't sacrifice the long-term love of your craft and drive yourself nuts over short-term bugs. To quote Rework, "ASAP is poison."
Speaking of your craft...
Software engineering is a craft. Treat it as such.
Learn to write Clean Code. Use TDD. Get really comfortable with the tools you use every day. You'll save yourself and your team loads of time and effort, and generally feel like a bad@$$ knowing that you're good at your job.
It's smart to ask questions like this as a junior dev, when your habits are still relatively malleable!
Can't recommend Clean Code enough. It changed my way of thinking about code so much!