Code, Coffee & Clarity ☕: EP.1
EP.1 — Start With You: The Best Development Begins Within
“Success in the knowledge economy comes to those who know themselves — their strengths, their values, and how they best perform.”
— Peter F. Drucker, Managing Oneself
A Simple Question… That Changed Everything
“What did I learn today?”
It sounds like a basic journal prompt — something you’d scribble in a tiny notebook before bed. But for me, this question transformed how I see work and life altogether.
As a full stack developer, my daily life revolves around bugs, pull requests, crashing APIs, and deadlines that come faster than coffee brews. But somewhere along the way, I realized: every single day has a lesson hidden in it — no matter how small.
But in the past, those lessons were just… moments that passed.
I’d forget how I fixed that weird bug, or how a casual conversation with a teammate revealed something deeper about life. It all just blurred into the background.
That is — until I read Managing Oneself. And something in me clicked:
I needed to start “logging” my own lessons.
A Little Book That Helped Me Refactor My Thinking
Managing Oneself isn’t a typical how-to guide that tells you to wake up at 5 AM and hustle harder.
It’s more like a manual for understanding the “source code of yourself.”
Peter Drucker doesn’t mention code, tech, or startups.
But what he talks about hits developers right where we forget to look — ourselves.
Instead of IDEs, he offers introspective debugging questions:
- What are your strengths?
- How do you learn best?
- In what kind of environment do you thrive?
- What do you truly value?
- What role do you want to play in this world?
These questions aren’t just for improving at work. They’re a mirror to help us understand why we sometimes feel exhausted — even when “we’re just doing our job.”
When I reflected on them, I couldn’t always answer with clarity.
But there was one question I could answer:
How do I learn best?
And that answer became the foundation of this series.
Because when I set out to truly understand something, I often realize that if I can write it clearly — I can use it clearly.
But the lessons I didn’t write down? I fooled myself into thinking I understood them. And when I needed them the most, everything fell apart.
A Devlog Not to Impress, But to Understand
When I started keeping a simple devlog each day, I realized:
You don’t need to write anything grand.
Sometimes, it’s just:
- “Oh, that error was because of a timezone mismatch.”
- “I snapped at a teammate today — they misunderstood the code’s intent.”
- “Stayed silent in a meeting today… and actually learned more than I ever expected.”
Over time, I noticed patterns in these logs.
It felt like I was building my own personal Feedback Analysis System — for life.
Feedback Analysis: From Code Reviews to Self Reviews
One of Drucker’s most powerful (and underrated) tools is simple but transformative:
Feedback Analysis.
The method:
- Before doing something, write down what you expect to happen.
- After 1–3 months, review what actually happened.
I tried it in my dev work. For example:
- Project A: Expected it to be done in 7 days. Took 14.
- Thought B: Thought explaining the logic would help my teammate. Instead, it overwhelmed him.
It’s like unit testing your life.
You’re not testing code — you’re testing your assumptions.
And just like code, patterns begin to emerge. Patterns that help you grow.
This Devlog Isn’t Just About Code — It’s About the Human Who Writes It
Sometimes my devlogs aren’t technical at all.
They’re about:
- Bugs that taught me patience
- Meetings that revealed the power of listening
- Failed deployments that reminded me to back up not just my systems, but my mental state too
Life Feels a Lot Like Version Control
We all have good commits.
We hit conflicts that need resolving.
We create experimental branches that don’t work out.
But in the end, everything gets merged — into the master branch of you.
The End of EP.1 (But Definitely Not the End)
If you’ve read this far, I want to say this:
You don’t have to change the world every day.
But if you’re brave enough to pause and ask:
“What did I learn today?”
Your world… will never be the same again.
See you in EP.2 —
where three lines of code taught me an all-day lesson on accepting what we can’t control.
Sometimes, the best lessons for devs aren’t on Stack Overflow…
They’re right inside us.
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