New Dev Year Resolutions
Tags: beginners, personaldevelopment, impostorsyndrome
Published: 2018-01-01 23:15:53

---
title: "New Dev Year Resolutions"
published: true
description: How I plan to level up as a developer in 2018
tags: beginners, personaldevelopment, impostorsyndrome
---
![](https://thepracticaldev.s3.amazonaws.com/i/l589cevt6wosnuv5uq3y.jpg)

1. **Impostor syndrome is canceled** - Sure, I get it. _Everyone has it._ And while it might be the hottest buzzphrase in our profession, I'd like to stop entertaining it. Because for me at least, sitting around feeling like I suck at writing software is actually outrageous considering I spend - no exaggeration - at least 75% of my waking hours doing it. And not just doing it, but meticulously ensuring that I’m following the best possible practices at all times. This year I’m going to give myself some credit. I’m going to take my accomplishments, my growth, and myself as a developer a little more seriously. I’m going to remember that I’ve worked hard to get where I am and that no one on this planet would ever continuously pay me to do something that I’m bad at, because I’m just not that lucky. And when someone compliments me for my technical skill - or anything for that matter - rather than smiling awkwardly or making some kind of self deprecating joke, I’m just going to say thank you.

2. **Get my social life together** - This wasn’t on my list of resolutions until I did that math and typed out "I spend at least 75% of my waking hours writing code.” So, I’m just going to leave this here.

3. **READ** - There really isn’t much to be said about this one. I haven’t done much reading since college (stack overflow, docs, and my horoscope not counted) and that should be fixed. I’ll probably never be the same bookworm who could read a whole Harry Potter installment in a weekend, but one book a month could do me some good. 12 books in a year. I think I can handle that.

4. **Go on vacation** - I’m notorious at work for never taking days off. This year I will take many. Or at least, as many as I am allotted.

5. **Contribute** - Just a few weeks ago I attended a workshop where the facilitator ran into an error during his presentation. The entire time he was trying to debug, I had the program running perfectly fine locally because I caught the error earlier while I was coding along. So there I am, watching the facilitator and attendees work through possible solution after solution and I’m just sitting there wanting to say something, and getting overwhelmingly lightheaded from the mere thought of speaking up. At some point, I whispered my finding to nothing and thankfully the person next to me heard and called it out. I tell you what, I did no one a single favor that afternoon. Myself especially. I’ve found that I can be somewhat irrationally afraid of the greater developer community and this has caused me to be a wallflower so to speak. It’s apparent that my best effort to "level up" this year toward my ultimate goal of being the best developer that I can possibly be would involve getting over myself (see resolution #1) and getting more comfortable with contributing. Whether that be to open source projects, or by collaborations, speaking up without fear of being wrong or dismissed, or even just joining technical conversations here on [dev.to](https://dev.to) and other forums. I’ll have to get off the wall completely this year to stay on my personal track.

What are your new "dev year" resolutions?