Don't get lost in the woods. Here, have a map
Tags: writing, webdev, personaldevelopment
Published: 2023-02-01 17:51:30

---
title: Don't get lost in the woods. Here, have a map
published: true
description: Know how to find all the valuable content posted in the last years,
tags: #writing, #webdev, #personaldevelopment
cover_image: https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/3ogb4ebtuxvwm3v1laxu.jpg
canonical_url: https://blog.juanfgonzalez.me/dont-get-lost-in-the-woods-here-have-a-map
# Use a ratio of 100:42 for best results.
# published_at: 2023-01-30 19:32 +0000
---

Welcome back and happy new year!

2023 is upon us. There are many things that can happen, many that _we_ can make happen, and many that will invariably happen regardless.

And since it's a new year, I can start writing about many topics in this and the following articles. 

But... 

I thought that instead of just getting started with those right out of the gate. 

I'd be doing you a disservice if I don't make it easy for you to find those previous articles. 

The ones that have had the greatest acceptance among folks and have helped some of them in their own learning journeys.

So, if you want to get the kind of "tl;dr" of this blog, keep on reading. You'll find a map to navigate everything that's worthwhile here.

![Using a map](https://media.giphy.com/media/cjbfyJrICOaKIXBWyG/giphy.gif)

## Web & personal dev in a nutshell

Now, how this is going to work. I'll be grouping them in categories or "themes" and write a short description of them. Why they are important and why you should read them.

There's also going to be a "miscellaneous" section. For those that can't quite fit other categories but they're still relevant or out of the ordinary in a way.

So, let's get on with them!

### Personal Development

First things first, we start with the most important.

This section is focused on **you** as a person on how you can improve and be better.

Because there's no point in having super-duper, ultra l33t haxxor skills, if you are a terrible person to deal with it and no one can stand you. 

And so, we start with the essentials first. Which, conveniently, I have an article on that

[Rediscovering the essentials](https://dev.to/juanfrank77/rediscovering-the-essentials-54ie).  

In this one, I talk about the 3 main concepts or "mental models" that have helped me many times in the past.

These 3 are like the pillars from where everything else can built on top. In case you go to a transition in life or there's an abrupt change (like you know, a sudden pandemic...)

After that, we move on to one of the most foundational building blocks, _habits_.

[Bad habits and how to break them](https://dev.to/juanfrank77/bad-habits-we-get-when-coding-and-how-to-break-them-2i3f).

This is a short story of how I picked up a big number of bad habits while in college and my battle to overcome them.

It also has practical actions you can take to break your bad habits and build more beneficial ones. Some of that advice is taken from one of my all-time favorite books.

And once you have good habits in place, we move forward to put them in a working order. Starting with some proper routines. 

[Routines, our different operating systems](https://dev.to/juanfrank77/routines-our-different-operating-systems-1abk).

Here you'll find what routines are, why they are important, a small peek into the operating system of the brain, and how to _actually_ implement all that into your own life. 

With all those things in place, you're in a much better position than the majority of people out there. (No, really, for sure.)

What we can keep doing is keep piling up small improvements over and over to get better results. But as doing work is important, so is taking the time to properly rest & recover. 

Which leads me to... 

[Making good progress minus the burnout](https://blog.juanfgonzalez.me/making-good-progress-without-the-burnout).

This one comes from that time where I took the challenge to write a new article _each day_ for 5 days straight. 

In it, you'll find that approach I mention to make incremental progress without getting to that dreadful place others call "burnout".

Lastly, I can't forget about this last one. I was a more "experimental" one and the few of those who got some peer feedback before getting published.

[To learn something, get your focus on first](https://dev.to/juanfrank77/trying-to-learn-something-new-get-your-focus-on-first-4a57).

In this one, you'll find one, _if not the most important_, aspect of learning things quickly and efficiently. 

And I'm not going to spoil the article, so I'll leave it at that. 😆

### Web Developmemt

Now, we move on to the more commonly known form of development. 

There are several articles in this section. But only a handful were the most popular and valuable for others. 

So, here's that top selection for you.

[Creating a new project, no design skills needed](https://dev.to/juanfrank77/creating-a-new-project-with-no-design-skills-2oaf).

This one is for all those folks out there that are doing front-end web development. But they don't have any notions of what constitutes "good design". Fortunately, there are tools out there that helps us with it.

[Hone your dev chops with Svelte](https://dev.to/juanfrank77/svelte-is-a-good-way-to-hone-your-web-dev-chops-49c9).

Speaking of front-end... 

The newest "kid on the block" of JavaScript, brings us all the good stuff of classic web development. 

And as well it gives us the opportunity to use that knowledge in real-world, production-ready framework. (This is even more relevant now that SvelteKit exists.)

[Making a quote switcher with JavaScript](https://dev.to/juanfrank77/build-a-quote-switcher-with-vanilla-js-140o).

And yes, speaking of classic web dev and JavaScript...

Here's an example on how to build something pretty cool and functional without using any fancy frameworks or libraries that are popular out there. 

[Level up your git workflow](https://dev.to/dailydotdev/level-up-your-git-workflow-3jio).
 
What is web development without a proper workflow for managing changes and updates to our projects? 

That's where Git comes into play. And although I've written about it in quite a few articles, this one is the one that stood out the most.

### Misc

In this section is where there are other articles who didn't make the cut in the previous two. But they're still useful and at least entertaining (maybe?)

Like the first time I wrote an article for someone other than myself and was the beginning of me realizing that writing can actually be profitable.  
(And not only used for knowledge sharing or personal reflection.)

[How to get out of "tutorial hell"](https://dev.to/dailydotdev/stuck-in-tutorial-hell-here-s-a-way-to-breakout-j39).

In this one you'll find about that common scenario that most of us have found ourselves in some time here and there. And how to use some practical techniques to make sure that you can expand your knowledge out of the bubble of an online tutorial.

Or the first time that I wrote an article recapping the events of the year. In a similar way to how development teams do after they finish a working sprint.

[2020 Retrospective](https://dev.to/juanfrank77/2020-retrospective-240d).

This one is just as the name implies. What happened in that year in a retrospective format. And a look to the future and possible events happening.

Or the first time I got an article featured on Hashnode.

[Learning something new by writing](https://dev.to/juanfrank77/can-you-learn-something-new-by-writing-5gpm).

This is mainly a recap and lessons learned from my aforementioned 5-day writing challenge. 
And guess what? I wrote about 5 different lessons there. Kinda one per each day. Although I didn't plan to do it like that, it just happened that way. 😆

And lastly, the article where I combined some of what I've talked in previous posted ones with some meta-learning and memory techniques. 

[Learn web dev easier with this trick](https://dev.to/juanfrank77/make-learning-web-dev-easier-with-this-trick-4e2f).

This one is pretty much what I said above about it. Even though it's geared towards learning web development, the "trick" works for other types of subjects. You just have to understand how it works so it can be applied to other areas.

---

## Conclusion

And that's about it for this article. 

I think it went a little longer than expected. Then again, I wouldn't be surprised seeing that it has happened many times in the past with others as well. 😅

But like I said at the beginning, this one was meant to give you a whole "overview" of what you can find in this blog. 

And is also to help surface some gems that are now buried in the sands of time (of previous years).

Nothing left for me to say at this point. Other than thank you very much for the time you've spent reading this or any of the other articles posted in here. 

I really do hope that you've found some value in them and they have helped you in some way. 

Thank you for being awesome and I hope to catch you again next month!

![Bye bye](https://media.giphy.com/media/mP8GermRyOFWV8PQeq/giphy-downsized.gif) 

---

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