-
Janet Crawford - The surprising neuroscience of gender inequality [33:20]
-
Denise R Jacobs - Banish your inner critic [52:39] Takeaway: Eliminate should/must/ought/have to - Banish slave words. Remember things that you have made that are big, and that you are proud of. What screws us up most in life, is the picture in our head of how it is supposed to be. Failure is only the opportunity to begin again more intelligently - Henry Ford. Understand why you procrastinate. Use structured procrastination - have 3 top priorities and work on the second one whilst procrastinating on the first. Have a to-don't list.
-
Simon Sinek - If You Don't Understand People, You Don't Understand Business [30:40]
-
Dr. Robert Cialdini and Steve Martin - The Science of Persuasion [11:50]
-
Kelly McGonigal - How to Turn Stress Into an Advantage [24:14] Takeaway: The higher a nation's stress index - higher GDP, happiness, health, life expectancy. High stress index correlates with learning, feeling loved, feeling happy. Stress can be a barometer for how engaged you are with the things that are good in your life - love, learning, growth etc. People who avoid stress likely to be sicker, more unhappy, more likely to have stress related illnesses. The more adversity - more meaning in your life.
-
Wil Reynolds - The Hidden Danger of Confusing Outputs for Outcome [19:42] Takeaway: Inspiration without getting stuff done is nothing. Plan out your day in terms of what outcome you want. The more your success scales, the more it shows the failures in it. To analyse your stress you need your data - Track your time. Maybe you aren't the best person to do your stuff. Getting things done means giving things up.
-
Teresa Amabile - Track Your Small Wins to Motivate Big Accomplishments [21:10]
-
Laura Schulz - The surprisingly logical minds of babies [20:18]
-
Margaret Heffernan - The dangers of "willful blindness" [14:38] Takeaway: Are there things that people are afraid to raise? Don't speak out because nothing will change, easier just to not see it. People who speak out are 'whistleblowers', usually loyal, conservative people.
-
Margaret Heffernan - Why it's time to forget the pecking order at work [15:47] Takeaway: Avoid superstars, average groups work better, superstars suppress the productivity of the rest. Successful groups higher scores for reading the mind in the eye tests (EQ measure). Give each member equal time to speak. 'There will be no stars in this team we need everybody'
-
David Logan - Tribal leadership [16:39]
-
Tim Urban - Inside the mind of a master procrastinator [14:03]
-
Dan Ariely - What makes us feel good about our work? [20:27]
-
Ramsey Nasser - The Unfortunate Value of Failure [34:35] Takeaway: Failure is not right or wrong. I expected X but I got Y. Failure = an undesirable result different to the intended one. In reviewing others code, if you don't have time to be constructive and helpful, don't bother to post at all. An answer that is technically correct but makes the asker feel horrible and deterred from programming is worse than no answer at all. Complexity exceeds mental capacity very quickly, leading to us interacting with computation at a distance. Programming = doing something new while learning. Learning has a chance of failure. Teachers - fail in front of your students to show its not all amadeus moments. Share your failures, its ok to stumble.
-
Jessica Rose - Impostor Syndrome and Individual Competence [26:49]
-
Dr. Brian Little - Personalities at Work [57:44] Takeaway: Trait Psychology - 5 traits each is normally distributed. 1. Open to experience - like experimenting. 2. Conscientousness - predictor of mortality. High conscientousness live longer. 3. Extraversion - seeking out excitement. 4. Agreeableness. Valuable for groups. Disagreeableness (Type A). 5. Neurotic/Hyper Sensitive - see things coming. Discussion of introverts and extraverts. When we act out of character for work, love, life etc we can only do this for so long before we probably burnout.
-
Linda Rising - Who do You Trust? Beware of Your Brain [52:00]
-
Zach Holman - Firing People [39:09]
-
Susan Cain - "Quiet" [43:48]
-
Jim Hemerling - 5 ways to lead in an era of constant change [13:21) Takeaway: Self transformation is exciting for people, organisational transformation is scary. Inspire through purpose. Don't hide downsizing in transformation. Give people the skills they need during the transformation. Create a culture of continuous learning. You need a clear roadmap with milestones.
-
Michele L. Sullivan - Asking for help is a strength, not a weakness [11:55]
-
Laura Vanderkam - How to gain control of your free time [11:54] Takeaway: Write down what you do each 30 mins. Look at it and work out what you actually want to do. Acknowledge I don't do XYZ because its not a priority. Write next years performance review or next years Xmas letter - What 3-5 things did you do that made is amazing? Put your priorities into the schedule first (2-3 items up front).
-
Adam Grant - The surprising habits of original thinkers [15:25] Takeaway: Originals are slow getting to the party. Procrastination is not good for productivity, but great for creativity. Originals feel doubt and fear but manage it differently. Self doubt is paralysing, but idea doubt it energising. Originals have lots of bad ideas - they fail the most, as they also try the most.
-
Shawn Achor - The happy secret to better work [12:20] Takeaway: It is not your reality that shapes your world, but the lens you view your reality through. Our external world only predicts 10% of our long term happiness. 75% of job success determined by positivity and performance not IQ. Every time you have a success your brain redefines the goal posts for the next one. The happiness advantage - we become more successful when we are happier rather than happier when we are more successful.
-
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi - Flow, the secret to happiness [18:55]
-
Jason Fried - Why work doesn't happen at work [15:21] Takeaway: People need long stretches of uninterrupted time, offices aren't good for this. Distractions at home are voluntary, in the office they are involuntary. Meetings need to be quick chats. No meeting days. Avoid active communication - move to passive communication like chat.
-
Jesse James - Supporting Mental Health as an Effective Leader [33:18] Takeaway: Be empathetic, proactive, willing to take the hit, open to communication, patient, set aside ego. Have a knowledge or the resources and benefits available such as EAP. Provide private spaces away from open office environments. Remote workers are much harder - must strive to get to know team. No noise != no problems. Build trust in your team so people know people taking time off is accepted as people doing the right thing.
-
Ed Finkler - Stronger Than Fear: Mental Health in the Developer Community [42:31] Takeaway: Honest open discussion about mental health in the developer community. Tell people they matter (so often people don't think they do). Tell them how they impact your life. Especially people whose brains lie to them.
-
Michael Ruggiero - What Do 1-on-1s Really Mean? [16:19] Takeaway: Every 121 should have an action item for you and them. Find out what irritates people. What is wasting your time? Be predictable. Be transparent. Avoid asking complainers what is bad, what could make people happy to people who are already happy. Ask the same questions to people each time.
-
Josh Simmons - Fail Early, Fail Often, Fail Well [31:03] Takeaway: Failure can feel like the end of life but its not. Types of failure to avoid - losing touch with people, do not be an island, don't do everything yourself, don't surprise pople, don't fail to measure things.
-
Deb Nicholson - Say No, Like a Boss! [28:50] Takeaway: Understand the total of sum of work you can actually do. Say no to ill defined work or too much work. Understand verbal self-defense and how people try to get you to do things.
-
Laura Eck - The Not So Rational Programmer [38:09] Takeaway: Your brain is a legacy system. Error handling is pretty awful so is the documentation. Brain sacrifices accuracy for speed - due to survival. Brain uses cognitive biases to make faster decisions. Mere exposure effect - we like things purely because we have been exposed to them. False consensus effect - we believe people agree with us alot more than they do. Groupthink - groups try to avoid conflict by diluting their opinions.
-
Meredith Noble - Use coaching techniques to help people make their own decisions [22:33] Takeaway: Giving advice can be problematic when you don't have enough context. Coaching is about asking powerful questions to help people reach their own decisions rather than giving advice. People are more likely to act on ideas they came up with themselves.
-
Sasha Laundy - Your Brain's API: Giving and Getting Technical Help [31:01]
-
Eric Hodel - Lessons in Mentorship [26:26] Takeaway: Good set of guidelines for technical mentoring - respect their space, build confidence, how to manage frustrations and thinking tools you can use to help explain technical concepts (amongst others).
-
Cheryl Gore Schaefer - Grow Your Team In 90 Days [38:19] Takeaway: Working with juniors - create learning plans, encourage self assessment. Create plan in a shared tool. Organize learning by time to learn. Assess the tools used. In code review provide exemplars. Do regular assessments.
-
Erika Carlson - 10 Lessons for Growing Junior Developers [35:28] Takeaway: Make sure people have the time to mentor. Set clear expectations. Don't give feedback when people are in crisis. Understand how people take feedback.
- Andrea Goulet - Communication is just as important as code [27:04]
- Celeste Headlee - 10 ways to have a better conversation [11:44]
- Amanda Quaranto - Nobody Expects an Inquisition!... [28:58]
-
Edward Kmett - Stop Treading Water: Learning to Learn [40:59]
-
Roux Buciu - Learning to code... better! [32:27] Takeaway: Build something meaningful. Plan to fail over and over again. How to learn anything - stick with a method, take a break, play with side projects, teach. Practice - read code and record your learning.
-
Aja Hammerly - Sharpening The Axe: Self-Teaching For Developers [34:38] Takeaway: Lifelong learning is whats required for Tech. Learn interesting stuff, hard stuf, stuff that makes you think. Learn something everyday - 30 mins away from your desk. Timebox, explore, throwaway. Try not to learn multiple things in parallel.
-
Linda Liukas - A delightful way to teach kids about computers [11:03]
-
Aino Vonge Corry - A Comment on Learning [51:22] Takeaway: Expert is when you can teach something, when you have an intuitive grasp of the whole situation. Recent memory can only hold 4 elements. Long term memory is used to decode ideas into the recent memory to get past the 4 item limit. Constuctivism - Can only teach using things that people already know and things they already relate to.
-
Marcin Floryan - #NoLearning [25:44]
-
Chuck Lauer Vose - Building kick-ass internal education programs (for large and small budgets) [30:34] Takeaway: 1 month of good onboarding can take 3 months off onboarding time. Onboarding is about confidence and comfort not just tech. Good discussion of ways to set up learning programs at work - lightning talks, pair programming, workshops and fishbowl discussions.
-
Katlyn Parvin - Am I Senior Yet? Grow Your Career by Teaching Your Peers [37:57] Takeaway: Tailor responses to level of skill and will of the audience. Resist the urge to teach by doing. Teaching is communication so work on your communication skills.
-
Miki Rezentes - Quit Frustrating Your New Developers - Tips From a Teacher [37:37] Takeaway: Purpose of teaching is to reduce the unknowns. Juniors need to see you don't know stuf too. Know what you are teaching - have a core book list and a recommended reading list. The lessons must build on things they already know so make sure you know where they are. Help people understand what good questions are. If they don't understand your answer, repetition won't help.
* Disclaimer - I know this speaker personally.