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Blog Archive 2005-December 2005-November 2005-October 2005-September 2005-August 2005-July 2005-June

Tue, 26 Jul 2005

You are responsible for you

I read a great entry today on Steve Freeman's blog.

Steve was quoting Kent Beck, apparently from XP2005

As Kent likes to point out these days, the only thing you can really change is yourself, so doing the best job you can is the only available response; the rest is out of scope.

There's a lot of wisdom in those words. You are responsible for what you do and who you are. If you're not happy with you level of expertise in a given area, don't wait for your tech lead or company to conveniently drop the training in your lap. Buy a book. Peruse via Google. Find the information yourself to improve yourself.

Find habits that you can practice with or without the rest of your team. Improve yourself. Don't stress over the rest. Do the best job you can and sleep soundly when you go home at night.

You can't control the customer, your management or any one of a thousand other potential issues related to your project. But you can control yourself instead of letting the project control you.

Also, Steve talks about a panel he sat on at XP2005 that's a great read. Check it out if you have the time.

posted at: 19:48 | path: | permanent link to this entry