When you become good at something, you can hit a wall in your

development. No matter how hard you try, you feel like you can’t
break through it. Pushing harder doesn’t pay off as much as before.

In this case, the solution might be not to add something but actually to
remove something.

“It’s only by saying NO that you can concentrate

on the things that are really important.”
— Steve Jobs
Our habits and what we believe in determine 90% of our actions. To be
a successful developer, we must become successful first in thoughts
and then in actions.

By giving up certain habits and beliefs, you create space and time for
the better.

1. Give Up the Fixed Mindset

Stop thinking that there is no other way that you know.

Be open to new ideas. If you are a rigid fanatic in your beliefs, then you
voluntarily put yourself in a prison closed to new and exciting ideas and
knowledge.

Stop thinking that you were not born to be good at something. Your
brain is flexible, and it’s designed to adapt, so you can change.

You can become great at math, algorithm complexity, system

architecture, dev ops, focusing, communications, discipline, and
anything else you can imagine. But you have to put in enough effort to
make it happen.
2. Give Up the Unhealthy Lifestyle
“To keep the body in good health is a duty… otherwise we shall not be
able to keep our mind strong and clear.”

— Buddha

Our body needs good input to produce good output.

Exercise — whether that’s jogging, biking, going to the gym, cross-

country walking, doing pull-ups, or yoga. All of this improves memory
and thinking skills, and also reduces stress.

Avoid health issues. Very few people can enjoy their day and produce
great results when they have the flu, not to mention more serious
diseases.

Your thoughts affect your health, and your health affects your
thoughts. Because they are so connected, you should take care of your
health and protect this precious asset.

Exercising regularly, getting proper nutrition, sleeping for seven to nine

hours a night, and taking time for meditation will help you uncover
your true potential as a person and a developer.

3. Give Up the Desire to Assert Yourself at the

Expense of Others
“An arrogant person considers himself perfect. This is the chief harm of
arrogance. It interferes with a person’s main task in life — becoming a
better person.”

— Leo Tolstoy

It’s easy to criticize someone else’s code. It gives you nothing and can
only harm your relationships with your team.
It’s difficult to understand someone else’s code, but the benefits will
exceed your efforts.

Understanding why the code was written a certain way and not in any
other way is more important than the feeling of I’m smart. Arrogance
interferes with learning, teaching, and the ability to be a team player.

4. Give Up Playing It Safe

“Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.”

— Neale Donald Walsch

Have a mindset of acting to win, not to avoid loss.

Take risks. Take on hard challenges. Get out of your comfort zone.
When you play safe, you lose the opportunity to win.

The world is constantly changing, and you cannot succeed if you

protect the status quo.

In an attempt to preserve what you have, you put yourself under

pressure that slowly grows over time. If pressure is unavoidable,
wouldn’t it be wiser to put the pressure toward improving and
producing something bigger than you were capable of before?

It’s much more fun and rewarding to achieve new results than to
protect what you already have. So don’t act because you’re scared to
lose. Act to win.

5. Give Up Being a Victim

“Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves
responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.”

— Sigmund Freud
Everything that’s happening to you is the result of your actions or lack
of them.

By thinking, “I am responsible for everything that happens to me,” you

gain the power to change it all. If you refuse to take responsibility for
the past, you lose your ability to affect the future.

No more complaints. Complaints rob you of believing that you can

change the situation.

No more blaming others. Blaming robs you of the ability to affect the
situation.

Next time when things go wrong because of your actions or inaction,

be the first person to admit this. Say to yourself and everyone, “This
happened because of me, and I will fix it.”

Take full responsibility for outcomes and results. Your peers will
respect that, and you will empower yourself. You only can be
successful if you take full ownership of your results.

6. Give Up the Idea of Overnight Success

“I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the
man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.”

— Bruce Lee

Everything that truly matters doesn’t happen immediately.

It may seem like success comes to someone after they make some
magic move — one action that immediately makes them successful.

Indeed, one action can change everything overnight. But it’s extremely
rare for this single action to be the only one. Instead, many actions
precede the successful one. Even for you, it might not be obvious what
chain of events and actions led you to where you are, but it is always
like this.

That’s why it’s important to do something that makes you happy and is
important to you — so the process itself will be a reward. And in the
meantime, don’t give up. All of your diligent actions right now are
surely leading you to success in the future.

7. Give Up the Blind Copy-and-Paste Habit

The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.”

—Leonardo da Vinci

Understand what you are doing. Don’t blindly copy-and-paste solutions

to get stuff done and fix things quickly.

Not only will you hurt your reputation by doing this, you will also cause
more problems than you fix.

Search for understanding, not for a solution. Understanding is much

more valuable in the long run than a completed task. This is because
your understanding will then lead you to many more solutions in the
future.

8. Give Up Hacking Problems

Some programmers approach problems that they don’t understand by
spontaneously trying to find a combination that results in “workable”
code. Those who do this learn nothing, and code that is produced this
way contains more bugs than before.

Strive to understand the problem and to solve its root cause. Read the
source code, dive deeper, and learn what you don’t know. This is the
path of craftsmanship that leads to true understanding and mastery.
9. Give Up Perfectionism
“Done is better than perfect.”

—A popular idea in Silicon Valley

Which is better, to make one perfect app, program, library, or piece of

code in the next several years, or to be prolific and make hundreds of
imperfect results this year? Not to mention that the perfect program
will be at just one particular point in time and for a small set of people,
and it’s often done only for you.

Thus, done is better than perfect.

Write good-enough code for your fellow developers, not perfect code
for yourself. You will always have the time and opportunity to improve
code that needs to be improved. In other cases, you will save time by
shipping code faster.

10. Give Up Writing Smart Code

“Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place.
Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by
definition, not smart enough to debug it.”

— Brian Kernighan

Smart code is an attempt to show the world how smart the author is. In
the vast majority of cases, people do not appreciate this. Rather,
people appreciate it when you think about them and try to make their
lives easier.

So write good, clean, and simple code that is easy to read and
understand. No one will benefit from the smart code, including you
three months later.
11. Give Up Writing the Shortest Possible Code
“I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to
make it shorter.”

— Blaise Pascal, mathematician and physicist

Readability first, then everything else.

A couple of decades ago, someone decided that coders can be

measured by lines of code they wrote during the time period. That was
not a wise idea.

Now we can see how developers think they are writing good code if
they are using the fewest possible lines or the fewest characters on a
line. This is not wise either.

Code written once will be read dozens or hundreds of times, so strive

to write readable code regardless of its length.

12. Give Up Writing Code That Will Be Helpful

“Someday”
“Those who have knowledge, don’t predict. Those who predict, don’t
have knowledge.”

— Lao Tzu

Less code means fewer bugs and less time to read, lint, compile,
review, ship, maintain, and debug.

Don’t spend time writing code that is not needed right now.

13. Give Up Your Need to Always Be Right

“A man who has committed a mistake and doesn’t correct it is
committing another mistake.”
— Confucius

There are so many of us who can’t stand the idea of being wrong and
want to always be right. This is even at the risk of hurting relationships
or causing a great deal of stress and pain, for us and for others.

What will you gain by proving to someone else that you are right? You
will spend tons of effort and will exhaust yourself or your opponent.
The cost of feeling right is making everyone else feel wrong. It’s just not
worth it.

You lose more by winning an argument. Instead of winning arguments,

strive to solve problems and help people.

14. Give Up Fighting for the Past

“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the
old, but on building the new.”

— Socrates

There is no way to change what has already happened.

Sure, you can change what people think about the past, but it will cost
you a lot and you’ll end up with unreliable benefits.

So don’t argue about the past. Concentrate on what to do now and

how to use what already happened to change the future.

15. Give Up Not Believing in Yourself

“When I look back on all these worries, I remember the story of the old
man who said on his deathbed that he had had a lot of trouble in his
life, most of which had never happened.”

— Winston Churchill
We’re really bad at remembering our achievements, and at the same
time, we’re really good at thinking that we need something else to
start being who we want to be.

Look back and see how much you’ve already accomplished. I’m sure
you’ve already done amazing things — you just rarely think about
them.

If you want to take a role, don’t wait for permission. Start doing what is
expected from a person in that role. If you need a title, eventually you
will get it this way. If you really want to do something, you don’t need
titles or permission to do it.

If you’re not sure how to do this, that isn’t a problem either — you will
figure it out while you do it. Do not underestimate your ability to figure
out the way to achieve your goals.

16. Give Up Trusting Only Yourself

“Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins
championships.”

— Michael Jordan

At the beginning of their careers, Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryan were
amazingly talented but selfish individuals. Both thought that only they
could win a game because others often drop the ball.

Phil Jackson, who won a remarkable 11 out of 20 NBA seasons as a

head coach of the Chicago Bulls and the Los Angeles Lakers, trusts in
the idea that a group of the best individuals can’t achieve success —
only teams can do that.
He was a coach for both players and nurtured this idea in Jordan and
Kobe, transforming them into the greatest players, players who
bonded with their teams and relied on their teams to win games.

A team is more than a sum of individuals. Teams are much stronger

than groups of strong individuals.

We should trust our peers to make their own decisions and their own
mistakes. We should allow them to do more important and complex
tasks, and offer a hand when they need it.

17. Give Up Trying to Do Everything

“Essentialism is not about how to get more things done; it’s about how
to get the right things done. It doesn’t mean just doing less for the sake
of less either. It is about making the wisest possible investment of your
time and energy in order to operate at our highest point of contribution
by doing only what is essential.”

— Greg Mckeown, “Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less”

Ideas like “I can do both,” “I can control everything,” and “Everything

should be like I want” will harm you at best and everyone around you
at worst.

It’s easy to lose the ability to determine what is really important in this
fast-paced contemporary world. But by knowing what is important, we
can leverage the Pareto principle. We can achieve 80% of our results by
applying 20% of our effort and omit the 20% of results that require the
remaining 80% of our effort.

It’s important to stop trying to do everything. The key is not to get

more things done, it’s to get the right things done.
It doesn’t matter how high you climb a ladder if that ladder is leaning
against the wrong building.

Strive to find your highest point of contribution and put all your effort
into that.

18. Give Up Negativity

“No one can create negativity or stress within you. Only you can do that
by virtue of how you process your world.”

— Wayne W. Dyer

Negative emotions attract more negative emotions. Emotions are how

we feel, and how we feel is our life. Thus, radiating negativity makes
our life unhappier. You will be surrounded by similarly negative people
who won’t be interested in contributing to your success. It turns into a
vicious cycle.

Just think about when you’re involved in something that brings you
great joy. You can do it all day long without feeling tired. You feel
happiness, not exhaustion. It’s not hard work that takes up our energy
— it’s what we feel and think.

Use gratitude as an antidote to negative thoughts and emotions.

To be a successful developer, you need to feel that you are a successful

developer. Be positive and attract happiness in your life. Happy people
become successful people, not vice versa.

19. Give Up Holding On to Guilt and Resentment

“Our fatigue is often caused not by work, but by worry, frustration and
resentment.”

— Dale Carnegie
Being responsible is a great thing, but please avoid feeling guilty about
results that do not satisfy you. Feeling guilty doesn’t add anything
good. On the contrary, this feeling prevents you from becoming a
better version of yourself.

Resentment is another emotion that sucks your energy. Reach out to

the people who you’re frustrated with and explain your problem to
them. Solve the issue and free up your energy to achieve great results.

Be emotionally intelligent. Find the issues that are preventing you from
using all your effort for creativity and resolve them proactively.

20. Give Up Believing That Everyone Should

Think Like You
It’s not egoism to want something — egoism is expecting that everyone
else wants the same thing as you.

Diversity is a strong tool in achieving great success. A healthy diversity

in opinions must be part of products and teams in order for them to be
successful.

It’s unhealthy to expect that everyone should think in your “right” way.
It’s unhealthy to surround yourself with people who only think like you.
And it’s also unhealthy to struggle because people think differently
from you and don’t accept your ideas.

To be successful, embrace diversity and think about what you can learn
from every other opinion.

21. Give Up Wasting Time

“I have so much that I want to do. I hate wasting time.”

— Stephen Hawking
It requires time to hone your skills, practice a new language, learn new
technology, and give 110% at your workplace. To gain that time, you
need to stop wasting it on things that do not move the needle for you
and your goals.

Stop spending time on relationships that do not make you happy. Stop
wasting time on TV shows that do not help you become better. Stop
wasting time on activities that do not make you stronger.

Without time-wasters that don’t add anything to your life, you’ll free
up your time for things that really matter to you and your success.

22. Give Up Being a Taker

“Givers advance the world. Takers advance themselves and hold the
world back.”

— Simon Sinek

Life gives to givers and takes from takers. This is an axiom of the
universe.

Those who seek immediate selfish results will be content only with
short-term results. Those who sincerely endeavor for others’ success
will experience a compound effect many times greater than their own
contribution. This is the rule of success.

To achieve great things, you need to leverage the power of giving.

Every day, you have the chance to free yourself from things that do not
serve you.

By giving up activities and emotions that are holding you back, you
create space for the better. By creating space for good habits,
activities, and emotions, we become a better version of ourselves.
The desire to be better lies in all of us, and we feel amazing when we
fulfill this desire. This is the path to be successful — and it’s available to
everyone.