All Source Code Is Only An Urgency, Not Important

If you read the timeless classic, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen R. Covey you will discover one of the main tenets:

Where Your Focus Should Be

Focus on what's important, not just the urgent.

When I first heard about that I thought isn't everything important actually urgent? It's not though.
Here are two examples:

1. The phone rings - it is an urgency to answer it because it will stop ringing. But answering the phone in the long run (to chat with someone) when you are working on something important is actually a distraction.
2. You need to pee. That is a real urgency but over your lifetime you will never want to say, "I spent my life peeing." 😂 It's just an urgency.

The author displays a diagram that helps you to break up your activities into the urgent versus the important. It looks something like this one:

*Image from *: https://www.peoplehum.com/blog/the-divide-between-urgent-and-important-tasks

If Always Focus On Code

If you always focus on the technical details of code it is probable you'll become an amazing software developer.

However, unless you create solutions that solve problems for users, you'll never accomplish much.

For example think about applications you use and how they actually solve your problems:

1. *web browsers *- allow you to find and read information that is available online
2. *mail clients *- allow you to easily read your correspondence from others and send messages and replies
3. word processors - allow you to write up your ideas and format them so others can get the information easily and can recognize your great ideas.

Apps Get Noticed, Code Does Not

The point here is that apps get noticed and are important to people, but for the most part code is not.

I'm a <Insert Tech Here> Dev

This is why the discussions about which front-end (Angular, React, Vue, ad infinitum...) are not useful. Those are just tools.

Think Of It Like A Hammer

Imagine someone saying, "Hey, I am really able to use a hammer great. I am an expert hammer user. The stuff I can do with a hammer is amazing."

No one cares.
But, what they do care about is what you build with that hammer.
If you built the Eiffel Tower using that hammer, people are going to care.

But What About The Skills?

Yeah, I know. I've been writing code for over 30 years and I've used C/C++, C#, JavaScript, ReactJS, ElectronJS, PERL, Swift, Kotlin and more.

I've written apps on every platform (Windows, Mac, Linux) but none of that matters.

Only Apps Matter

The only thing that matters is if I've built an app you know about.

This Kind of Mindset Will Help You Grow

Think about this and start thinking about your skills a bit differently and it'll help you be more valuable to every company that you work for and hopefully eventually help you build your own app and company.