We all learn lessons as we make our way through life and work. Ricky Onsman thought it might be useful to find out what kind of advice folks in the community have found to be particularly valuable. Some of the following advice focused exclusively on web work, some on work in general, and some on life in general.
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Productivity tips always make for a popular topic for an article, as everyone is looking for the silver bullet, that one weird trick that turns you into a productivity machine. So, we asked the community on Twitter and Facebook to share their best productivity tips, and in this article Racheal Andrew is going to round these up alongside some things she’s learned that work well for her. Let us know your own advice in the comments, or tell us the popular tip that would never work for you!
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When Denys Mishunov was invited to speak at one of the best front-end conferences in Europe, he felt like he did not deserve to be at that conference. And he didn’t even know that those feelings of his had a name! This is called impostor syndrome and it is a real psychological issue, rooted deeply in many of us. If we do not pay attention to its symptoms, if we blindly follow its triggers, then we can get into real psychological trouble. The good news is that, even though there is no pill for it, we can change out attitude towards it. Simply acknowledging the feeling can help to neutralize its effect.
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The web community has assembled some fantastic advent calendars this year, and to make the choice of which ones to follow a bit easier, Cosima Mielke collected a selection of advent calendars in this Quick Tip for you. No matter if you’re a front-end dev, UX designer, or content strategist, we’re certain you’ll find something to inspire you for the upcoming year. So prepare yourself a nice cup of coffee, cozy up in your favorite chair and, well, enjoy!
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A while ago we asked on Twitter and Facebook what music the web community is listening to when coding and designing. The answers were as diverse as the community itself and Cosima Mielke has compiled those hand-crafted playlists, favorite artists, and loved soundtracks in this article to see which tunes fuel the web, and to provide you with some new ear candy to get you through lengthy coding and design sessions, of course. Get your headphones ready!
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So you’ve attended a conference, listened to some truly inspiring talks, made quite a few valuable connections, maybe even attended a hands-on workshop and learned a thing or two. What now? How do you bring back the new knowledge and ideas and connections to your team and to your work? This article highlights a practical strategy of getting there without much effort.
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Extensible and customizable tools are nothing new. Most of what we use can be extended in one way or another, whether in the form of add-ons, plugins or specialist languages. Christian Heilmann wrote a lot of extensions and toolbars, which very much boosted the productivity of his company back then. Thankfully, these days, companies understand that offering specialist languages is time wasted, when the web stack has grown to become much more interesting to build applications with. If you download Visual Studio Code now, you will see that my autocomplete feature is a part of it. And here is how Christian did that.
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There are around 100 web conferences in the UK every year. The picture across the rest of Europe looks just as abundant, with at least half a dozen conferences in every major city from Berlin to Barcelona. At the same time, smaller towns like Malmö, Faenza and Freiburg have become surprise hubs. Today’s conferences have moved away from the simple dissemination of information to become experiences in their own right. Often the people and location have become more important than the talks themselves. As such, the choices seem endless and picking the right conference can be a challenge — but it hasn’t always been that way.
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Now is a great time to start a podcast. It’s an authentic and intimate way to demonstrate authority in your niche and to grow your client base. Kyle Racki recently started his first podcast, Agencies Drinking Beer, with his cofounder, Kevin Springer. When starting out, he was a bit lost with the technical logistics of actually setting up the podcast. Here is all of the best advice, information and resources Kyle can offer you. This way, you can spend less time on the technical side of setting up your podcast and more time creating killer content. It’s a lot of work, and discipline is required to regularly deliver new content, but the reward is more than worth the effort. Ready to start? Let’s go!
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There will be times when it gets tough. They won’t last forever but they will happen. In this article, Paul Boag asks you to remember one thing when those times come… You are not a machine. You might think this all sounds rather depressing but, you know, it isn’t. It is meant as an encouragement, that if you are struggling you are not alone; that there is not something wrong with you, there is something wrong with the industry. Allow yourself to be human by cutting yourself some slack and getting help. Long hours are not a badge of honor, they are a sign of failure, pure and simple.
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