One habit for continuous learning

I once received advice from someone whom I thought was a mature adult: "Don't become a software engineer. You'll always have to learn new things!" I was taken aback by this comment, but my response was simple: "Good!"

At the time, I was a young adult fresh out of high school, approaching a computer science degree. I had always been fascinated by technology and relished the idea of constantly acquiring knowledge and solving problems.

Today, as a software engineering professional with many years of experience, I'm grateful that I didn't heed that person's advice. Learning new things is one of the most rewarding aspects of my job. It keeps me challenged, engaged, and allows me to grow professionally.

While learning is an integral part of my job, it's important to acknowledge that we can't retain everything in our minds. I have often found myself searching for how "equality" works in JavaScript.

Even though I embrace a career of continuous learning, I strive to spend most of my time acquiring new insights. Inspired by Ray Dalio's book "Principles," I've adopted the practice of documenting lessons to facilitate accountability and learn from past experiences. This approach has coalesced into a habit; Whenever I relearn something, I promptly jot it down in Google Keep.

This habit has become a positive feedback loop (call it a flywheel, if you're a product manager). Maintaining the habit of noting recurring lessons motivates me to have fewer entries to write about.

Hence, I created this blog with the intention of further cultivating this habit of organizing these ideas, and it also gives me an excuse to indulge in my dual hobbies of drawing comics and coding. On that note -- I integrated a comment system into this blog using Mastodon, so I'm eager to hear from you. Do you keep track of your work principles?