7 Habits for Success from a Software Engineer

Normally I’m suspicious of list of steps to success because success is very hard to sum up like that. Even if you get it right, it’s likely to be misread by people. But these points come from a Software engineer which I admire for his deep insights. [video]

Here are my personal comments on each habit.

Take ownership of your life

This point is far more important than most of us think. Sometimes we have to hit rock bottom to finally take charge. Once you take charge your life will improve radically.

Accept failure

If you wither about failures you will take longer to go back to work on what’s important or worse, fail to recover altogether. Change your relationship with failure, think about it like this: “To get to my objective I need to overcome 10 embarassing failures.” Now every time you fail you will feel great because you know you are one failure closer to your goal.

Stay humble

You won’t learn much if you are arrogant. Stay humble and you’ll suck up knowledge from other people and life in general, like a sponge!


What do you do at 8 pm ?

Be aware of how you are spending your time and energy. It is ok to chill out but bf you just consume the TV every single night, understand that that is likely where you will be in 10 years from now. We don’t have that much free time, make good use of the few free hours you have during the day because they will define the future version of yourself.

The last 10% is the hardest. Finish it.

Your projects will have the most impact if you finish them. Don’t let everything half finished. You will have a greater impact and feel greater.

Know why you are doing it.

Find your inner motivation. Don’t just do things because you are told to. For example, if you learn, don’t do it for the certificate. Think about how you can use that knowledge to create an impact that you’d find cool.

Continuously learn

Something I noticed is that if I find the joy of doing something, I learn faster, better all the while having lots of fun. Adopt a continuos learning mindset and try to make it as fun as possible. If you want to learn more about how happines defines success click this link.