How to be a Successful Software Engineer

(Of course this criticism comes from someone still in school, so you should take it with a grain of salt. Or appreciate the irony.)

Then I hit 'Be Asynchronous', and thought it was brilliant. This is the solution to the multitasking craze, a systems-term with business buzzword potential I can actually get on board with. This is what Harvard Business Review and MBA lemmings should have been advocating all those years ago - don't multitask, be asynchronous. Prioritize, and renice the lower priority stuff and push it into background processes where it gets CPU cycles only if the high priority stuff isn't busy. Get the same stuff done without running yourself ragged while maintaining the capacity to achieve flow and think thoroughly and deeply about the higher priority stuff.

Nice work. You should write an article on just Multitasking vs. Asynchronous, then send it off to Harvard Business Review. They've published a few articles lately critiquing multitasking, but without clear next steps. Show them the way forward.

"Be asynchronous

This one is weird, but I wanted to talk about it anyway.

Actually use todo lists and RSS feeds. Like email, these are asynchronous systems. You send an email, subscribe to a feed, or write down a todo item, and you don’t worry about it too much anymore. Sure, you check your email the next day or read your feeds before bed, but you don’t have to keep checking a website for new content or be sitting staring at the “John is typing…” text on Skype. You can dedicate time to dealing with things, write them down when you think of them, and deal with them in the time you’ve set aside. The more you can get out of your brain into some other system the better. This allows you to focus on the task at hand. Later, when the time comes to deal with email, or read feeds, you can focus on that.

These are some things that apply more to computer related fields , but I list them because they’ve really helped me out."

I've been using dropbox in much the same way you use Google docs. I like that added feature that the files are available on my computer and I can easily get them through the drop box site if I need to.

I've also been using my ipad in much the same way as you use your kindle. I've read so many books since I got it.

I could probably increase my online participation. I think this is my 6th comment on HN. I should really fix up my blog too.