Planning my career development for 2021

If you are interested in reading this article in Spanish, check out my blog:
The Developer's Dungeon

Hey guys, 2021 is finally here!. It has been a hard year but now so it is time to plan everything again, to write down on paper what I want to learn or do this year.

If you been following my blog posts for some time you will know that I am a big fan of setting goals, planning, tracking, and of course DOING.

Last year I focused on too many things and while I accomplished quite a few of the things I proposed to myself, I also noticed the pressure of not reaching what I was expecting was pushing me back. This year I am gonna go a little lighter, in the number of things but not on the effort, let's call it just having a "better" direction.

Let's start already, shall we?

1. Be comfortable writing at least in one functional programming language

Last year I spent quite a lot messing around, going from book to book, looking up languages, talking to people, doing small tests on different environments. For this year I have made the decision to focus on learning Haskell, at least first. This is gonna be my initial curriculum:

• Read Haskell Book.
• Read a Type of programming.
• Read Learn you a Haskell for great good.
• Read Category Theory for programmers.
• Do at least one big personal project with Haskell.
• Explore other languages like Elm, PureScript, F#, Clojure.
• Read Functional programming for the object-oriented programmer.
• Re-Read Structure and interpretation of computer programs.

By separating a big goal into smaller concise tasks I don't need to worry about what to do next, I just follow the plan, if something is not going right I solve the issue and continue.

2. Get better at software architecture and computer science

Last year I didn't focus on this at all, last year I had this idea that I wanted to learn more frontend, so I switched positions at my job and became a frontend developer. That taught me that I not really that interested in the frontend after all haha.

• Read The imposter’s handbook series.
• Read and study Clean Architecture.
• Read and study Domain Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the heart of software.
• Read and study Implementing Domain-Driven Design.
• Take on a project at work where I can design a system from scratch.
• Create a personal project using the concepts learned, while diagraming the architecture.
• Participate in architecture discussions at my new position to learn about distributed systems.

I started the year with a new position, a new job as a Senior Software Developer in a place with some complex architectural decisions and a lot of cools systems to play with. I am gonna use this opportunity to learn as much as I can from my new team members and at the same time try to boost my own knowledge on the subject.

3. Get better at writing

Last year I wrote a lot of blog posts, even a few that got me on the top of the list at awesome communities like CodeNewbie, but not nearly as much as I would like.

I started strong but in the end, the search for a new job, and my other goals got in the way. This year I am aiming to have fewer things to focus on, but do them with maximum effort!.

• Plan certain dates during the week where I am gonna write.
• Have a list of topics I can write about so I can just pick one from the pile when the time comes.
• Write at least 2 blog posts a week.
• Write about what I am learning to solidify knowledge.

4. Improve my involvement with the community

This year I joined a community called FrontendCafe, awesome people from Argentina and other countries of Latin America (and people from Spain too 😄 ). This year I want to continue meeting developers all over the world but I want to give special attention to people from the Spanish speaking community, specifically those who don't have the means to learn new things or that face some of the problems I faced when I was starting in this industry.

• Give more mentorships at FrontendCafe and outside the Spanish speaking community.
• Spend more time helping new users and using my role as a Staff member in FrontendCafe.
• Go to meetups (if they come back).
• Give a talk at a local meetup (if they come back).

As you may notice some of the things I already said in the planning of 2020 and that is perfectly fine. I didn't reach the level I want to achieve in many topics so this year I am gonna focus even more on those.
Other topics have disappeared completely, that is fine too. After 2020 I learned a few lessons about myself, about what I like, and in which topics I want to invest more of my time on.

I hope you like my planning for 2021, if so please share it and let me know below in the comments. Do you have a similar plan? I would like to read it, the comments is also the perfect place for that.

See you soon 😄