Ruthlessly Helpful

Engineers must only be limited by their intellect and available time, subject to a sustainable pace. Maturity and experience are important, too.

This quote is a paraphrase of something a boss from long ago said to me. Here are the things I did to change my professional life based on this revelation, I tried to:

• Develop my intellect: Stretch my brain. Learn new skills. Acquire new knowledge. Play brain games. Start taking notes instead of always relying on my recall. Read a lot.
• Increase my available time and set a sustainable pace: Debug my personal software process (see PSP). Read some relevant books: Personal Kanban. First Things First. Learn how to say no, especially to things that are not important. Define what’s important.
• Raise my maturity level: Read some key books: Raising Your Emotional Intelligence, Working With Emotional Intelligence, I’m OK — You’re OK, Go to cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for my professional and personal challenges, especially to better cope with difficult people.
• Have many and varied experiences: Don’t get the same 1-year of experience for 20 years. Switch jobs. Work with people who challenge me. Don’t make the same mistake once (learn from other people’s prior mistakes). Read ahead in life by learning about other people through their biography and memoire; especially their failures.

In the end, all of these things that I tried to do I continue to do. I find them to be very helpful. I also find that I am able to be helpful to others, if I’m working to be my best.