In this post, I share my perspective from 30 years of building systems, from MRP II in 1994 to AI-powered ecommerce solutions today. I’ve learned lessons that are worth their weight in gold. I see too many students focusing on things that don’t generate the expected impact, so I’ll be direct about what really matters.

Fundamentals Are Your Superpower

Frameworks come and go. I’ve seen so many emerge and disappear that I’ve lost count. But do you know what remains relevant? Understanding data structures, algorithms and the fundamental principles of programming.

When I started my programming career, it was with Clipper. Then VB6, JavaScript and finally C#. Each transition became easier because the fundamentals were solid. Today, I see people jumping straight into React or Angular without truly understanding JavaScript. When the framework changes (and it will change), those people get lost.

Before diving into the next trendy framework, make sure you understand data structures, algorithmic complexity, design patterns and how your language actually works. This will save you when you need to decode that impossible bug at 2 a.m.

Portfolio over Certificates

In 1997, I started building Advocati.NET, a complete management system for law firms with integrated CRM that evolved from VB6/Access to C#/ASP.NET/SQL Server. That project opened more doors for me than any certificate ever could.

Build real things. It doesn’t need to be revolutionary. A well-made CRUD with tests, CI/CD and clean code already puts you ahead of 80% of candidates. Even better: Solve a real problem, even if it’s small.

My advice: Take a problem that you or someone close to you has. Build an end-to-end solution. Real deployment, real database, real users (even if it’s just five people). This is worth infinitely more than 10 tutorials following the letter.

Specialization with Flexibility

I’m a .NET/C# specialist, but throughout my career I’ve also worked with JavaScript, TypeScript, Angular, React, and now I’m deep into AI. This flexibility allowed me to survive multiple waves of technological change.

Don’t lock yourself into a single stack. But don’t be superficial in everything either. Find your main axis and, from there, expand gradually.

Master one core area (backend, frontend, mobile) but maintain active curiosity. Learn enough about other areas to communicate well with your colleagues. This will make you nearly irreplaceable.

Areas with Real Longevity

If you want long-term stability, some areas are safer bets:

Backend and Infrastructure: There will always be a need for people who understand what happens “under the hood.” I’ve worked with Windows Server since 2003, Azure, DevOps, CI/CD. These skills never became obsolete; they just evolved and became more complex.

Security: The more digital the world becomes, the more critical security is. I took a digital security course in 2019 and still use those concepts daily.

Data and AI: I developed AI solutions back in 2000 (yes, AI isn’t new), now supercharged with generative AI. Today, with LLMs and the current boom, those who truly understand data and can integrate AI practically have a market for decades.

DevOps/SRE: The bridge between dev and operations has never been so valuable. Experience with Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions and CI/CD makes you essential.

The Myth of the 10x Developer

Forget this story if you’ve heard it, of the 10x developer. In my experience, I’ve never met a “lone genius” who delivered 10x more. I’ve met many consistent developers who, over time, generated a massive impact by writing code that others could maintain, sharing knowledge, elevating the entire team’s level and avoiding unnecessary technical debt.

Consistency and collaboration beat genius every day of the week.

AI Changes Everything (But Not How You Think)

I’m currently developing an automated platform for creating SaaS platforms, already thinking about APIs being consumed by other AIs. AI won’t replace developers, but it will replace developers who don’t know how to use AI.

Use tools like GitHub Copilot, ChatGPT and Claude to accelerate your work. But understand what they’re doing. Review the code. Test it. AI is a multiplier, a simple tool, not a substitute for understanding.

Conclusion

• Learn solid fundamentals.
• Build real projects.
• Choose a specialization but maintain flexibility.
• Invest in areas with longevity.
• Develop soft skills.
• Be consistent, not “10x.”
• And use AI as a tool, not a crutch.

I’ve been on this journey for 30 years, and I’m still excited. If you choose this path for the right reasons, a love for solving problems, constant curiosity and the desire to build things, you’ll have an incredible career. Obviously, good compensation matters, but it shouldn’t be your main motivation.

And you? What fundamentals have saved you in your career so far?

At 17, I picked up my first book on Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). Not because a mentor recommended it or out of philosophical curiosity, but because I wanted to understand how I worked and what I could become. I found the world meaningless and thought my problems were too big for me to handle. The book introduced me to an idea that seemed too obvious to be true: If you have a problem, you can solve it. Life doesn’t hand you burdens you can’t carry.

It took me years to understand what that really meant. And even more years to realize that this lesson wasn’t just about fixing code bugs.

What I’m sharing here comes from my personal experience, mistakes included. It might not apply to you, but if even one of these reflections makes you pause and think, it’s worth it.

Know Thyself (Before Life Forces You To)

“Know thyself”: Socrates said this millennia ago, but nobody teaches you how to do it in school. And for developers, this self-knowledge isn’t a philosophical luxury. It’s a survival tool.

Today, I know what sets me off in a code review. I know how I react when someone questions my architecture. I understand why I prefer working on complex features alone before presenting them to the team. But it took me a long time to get here.

The problem is that we’re several different selves: The developer who defends their technical choices tooth and nail, the team member who needs to compromise in discussions, the professional who accepts projects they don’t like to pay the bills, the friend, the son, the father. Each of these selves has its own behavior patterns. And you only discover these patterns by going through experiences, preferably by seeking them out instead of just waiting for them to come.

Early in my career, conflict situations left me stunned: How can people not see the clarity of my idea, the way I see it? Defending a different technical idea seemed like arrogance. But over time, I learned something counterintuitive: I started to enjoy conflicts. Because it’s in friction that you discover what your ideas are really made of. It’s when people lose their cool that they show who they are, and so do you.

But this only makes sense when you know yourself. When you know what your path is.

And this is work only you can do. There’s no YouTube tutorial, no framework. It must come from within.

Some Questions That Helped Me (And Might Help You)

Is what I do/work aligned with what I feel?

Not in the romantic “do what you love” sense, but in the honest sense: Does this move me or anesthetize me?

Do my opportunities make me grow?

Or am I just repeating what I already know how to do because it’s comfortable?

What do I have to learn where I am today?

If the answer is “nothing,” you should have already left.

An important aside: There’s a dangerous belief that “doing what you like” is a privilege for billionaires. That you need to suffer first, make money later and only then can you afford the luxury of liking what you do. That’s a lie.

The point here is that successful people did do many things they didn’t like, yes. But that’s not why they succeeded; it’s despite it. And curiously, neuroscience shows that doing things you don’t like (like washing dishes) strengthens your ability to deal with adversity. Children who have household responsibilities develop greater resilience and entrepreneurial tendencies.

The point isn’t to avoid discomfort. It’s knowing why you’re doing what you don’t like, whether it’s a means to a clear end or just an escape from the decision to know yourself.

Solitude Isn’t the Enemy (It’s the Laboratory)

Developers have a strange relationship with solitude. Our profession pushes us toward it, hours in front of the screen, headphones on, immersed in problems that only exist in our heads. And at the same time, they tell us we must be “collaborative,” “work as a team” and “do pair programming” (which, personally, I think is excellent).

The truth I learned is that any person’s life, no matter how social they are, is fundamentally solitary. Nobody’s going to be responsible for your commitments, your architecture choices or your career. You must count on yourself most of the time.

This doesn’t mean you don’t need friends or a team. It means you need to learn to live with yourself first, and that’s a challenge.

And for developers, this skill is even more valuable. Because developing technically is more about thinking than acting. When you’re programming, solving a complex bug or architecting a solution, solitude isn’t isolation; it’s focus. You don’t need constant interaction to deliver. In fact, interruption is often the enemy.

But, and this is crucial, you can’t think everything through alone. A healthy dose of team interaction is necessary. The trick is knowing when to be alone and when to seek others out.

Things I did to master my relationship with solitude: Going to the movies alone, to restaurants, to concerts. It sounds silly, but it’s not. It’s about learning to appreciate your own company. It’s about creating inner life.

Artur da Távola, a Brazilian thinker, said: “Music is inner life, and whoever has inner life will never suffer from loneliness” (free translation).

Quality moments alone, without electronics, without notifications, just you, good music or a good book, make a difference. It’s in this silence that you process the day’s conflicts, understand why that meeting irritated you, and notice patterns in your behavior.

Solitude isn’t punishment. It’s the laboratory where you get to know yourself.

Early Success: The Invisible Trap

At 21, two years after entering the IT field, I started my own company. Money came fast. A lot of money. It seemed like I had cracked the code of life.

That success stagnated me.

Early success is a dangerous drug. It addicts your brain. It fills you with false confidence because you don’t yet understand that success has context, timing and luck. You think it was all competence.

The problem isn’t success itself; it’s not realizing that the premises that got you there won’t be present at the next level. You level up, but want to play with the same strategies.

I wasn’t prepared for the next level of growth. I didn’t know how to scale people, processes and complexity. And when a serious accident caused me to stagnate for nearly a decade, I realized I had built castles in the sand.

It was during this forced pause that I did the best work of my career. I focused on developing a legal system with features nobody else had: a complete change in history, field by field, and thousands of features meticulously thought out in the most minor details. Advocati was considered the best legal software in Brazil in 2007.

But it took me until 2011 to return strongly to the market.

Those years taught me something brutal: Enjoy your success, but don’t be blinded by it. Don’t become arrogant. Lower your expectations that everything will always work out. This gives you a more realistic view.

I’m not saying dream small. Dream big, but take solid, consistent steps. Our lives are increasingly fluid, and constantly changing goals and objectives get you nowhere. Having a fixed target and mapping out the right strategy to reach it, without illusions, is the safest path.

And there’s something else: You’ll repeat your mistakes until you learn the lesson. Your life is teaching you something. If you don’t understand or don’t even realize there’s a reason behind your challenge, you’ll keep repeating the same cycle.

Life isn’t a game where you pass levels. It’s more like debugging as you run the code, see where it breaks, adjust and then rerun it. The problem only disappears when you understand its root cause.

What to Do With All This?

Knowing yourself isn’t a destination. It’s a daily journey. It’s noticing when you’re reacting on autopilot. It’s questioning why that comment on PR irritated you so much. It’s having the courage to be alone with your thoughts. It’s celebrating success without thinking you’ve become invincible.

When the next conflict comes, the subsequent failure, the next success, you’ll have something most developers never build: clarity about who you are when nobody’s watching.

What I’ve shared here comes from decades of learning. Your journey will be different. But if you start getting to know yourself now, maybe you won’t have to wait for an accident to learn what took me decades to understand.

What’s Next for Me?

Having learned my lesson, I’m always looking for new ways to challenge myself.

Today I’m working on an exciting AI project that’s pushing the boundaries of modern development, an intelligent SaaS platform creator powered by natural language prompts. This innovative tool leverages .NET 10 for a robust backend, Microsoft SQL Server for enterprise-grade data management, and React with Next.js on the frontend, all brought together with the rich UI components of the Progress KendoReact library.

The vision is simple yet powerful: Describe your SaaS platform requirements through prompts and watch as AI transforms your ideas into a fully functional, production-ready application, complete with professional interfaces powered by AI and scalable architecture.

To validate the project, we’re developing and refining it alongside five real-world systems built with this new product.

And I look forward to learning about myself in the development of this project.

What’s next for you?

Whether you just landed your first job as a designer/developer or you’ve been working for years, impostor syndrome can hit at any time. All it takes is for just one seed of doubt to be planted before you start wondering, “Am I even capable of doing this job? No one thinks I’m any good anyway. Maybe I should quit, save them the trouble.”

The problem with impostor syndrome is that it’s more than just negative self-talk. If it goes on for long enough, it can cause significant damage to your mental health, relationships and career.

So, rather than feed into this vicious cycle of tearing yourself down, let’s discuss some strategies that can help you get past impostor syndrome.

What Is Impostor Syndrome?

According to McLean Hospital:

“When someone has impostor syndrome, they experience repeated feelings or thoughts that they are incompetent or not good enough, despite evidence to the contrary. These beliefs often have roots in someone’s personal history and tend to play out in work, academic, and other high-pressure settings. Unaddressed, they can keep people from enjoying their successes and living life to its full potential.”

What do these feelings of insecurity and self-doubt sound like? Here are some examples:

• “I’m not good enough.”
• “I don’t belong here. Everyone is smarter than me.”
• “Everything I build is awful.”
• “I guess I charge … $12 an hour?” (Because you can’t imagine anyone paying you a fair wage for your work.)
• “I’m a complete disaster.” (After making a small mistake that no one noticed.)
• “I can’t ask for help because then they’ll realize I don’t know anything.”
• “Any day now they’ll figure out I’m a fraud.”
• “[Coworker] always does a better job. They should just give them all the important jobs.”
• “It didn’t have anything to do with me. It was all because of …” (When someone gives you a compliment.)
• “Here’s the onboarding mockup I created. It’s not very good. I’m sure you won’t like it.” (When presenting your work to a client.)

Impostor syndrome doesn’t just manifest itself in the words you speak about yourself or work. It can also create anxiety and depression, lead to insomnia and negatively impact your work performance. In addition, it can burn you out.

According to the American Psychological Association (APA), it can also make people not want to work with you. Not because you’re not good at what you do. But because your attitude is draining and they feel like it’s impossible to connect with you.

It’s almost as if impostor syndrome becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. While managers, coworkers and clients may not have had a problem with the quality of your work before, they will once it and your attitude degrade over time.

How to Keep Impostor Syndrome from Getting in Your Way

Starting to feel the side effects of impostor syndrome at work? Here are some things you can do to get it out of your way (and out of your head):

1. Focus on What’s True, Not on What You Feel

Let’s take one of the example sentiments from above:

“Everything I build is awful.”

Let’s say this thought keeps crossing your mind every time you turn something into your supervisor or client.

The first thing to do is to recognize that this is a thought and nothing more. Unless you have a client shouting at you that you are indeed awful every time they see your work, this is your own criticism you’re dealing with.

Next, focus on what’s factual:

• What are the five last projects or tasks you completed?
• What was the feedback you received on them from others?
• In the end, was your employer or client satisfied with the end result?

You can’t argue with facts. So, the next time you start with the negative self-talk, call to mind what you’ve been working on and how it was received. Actually look at the paper trail from the project to work with facts and don’t just recall memories that may be tainted by your feelings.

Also make note of major wins and write them down somewhere. Positive client testimonials. Referrals from a client you worked closely with. Management congratulating you in front of the team. A bonus at the end of the year. As they stack up, it’ll be hard to call yourself an impostor.

2. Talk to Someone You Respect

If you’re seriously doubting the quality of your work, bring it to someone you admire and respect in your field. And avoid sharing it with someone whose opinion you could easily discard, like a loved one. (“Oh, they just said that so I wouldn’t feel bad.”)

There’s no need to share your opinions or criticisms about the work with your peer. Instead, just bring it to them with the hope of getting unbiased feedback, and see what they say.

To start, if they pay you any compliments, graciously accept them. Remind yourself that they have no reason to lie to you or sugarcoat the truth. They are someone you respect and whose opinion you trust. They get nothing out of lying to you.

If they give you feedback, remember that feedback does not equal failure. We all get feedback, even when we’re experts at the top of our careers. Thank them for their feedback, make note of the input you received and then spend time reviewing it.

Put aside your negative self-talk and evaluate the feedback against reality. Is it fair? If so, what can you do to address it and improve?

This is what feedback is for. It helps us better understand our strengths and weaknesses, and to put a plan in place so we can move forward better than before. Not to wallow in perceived criticism.

This is the difference between an impostor and an expert. The impostor won’t know what to do with the feedback or how to grow from it. The expert will. They’ll also have the motivation to do so, too.

3. Ask Your Manager or Peers for Support

Let’s say your feelings of impostor syndrome have come from something that your manager, clients or peers have said to you. This again comes down to whether you’ll allow that feedback to fester or to put it to good use.

For example, let’s say that your manager hasn’t been pleased with your creation of color palettes. If they haven’t given you feedback on how to create them, reach out for support and guidance. Or you can turn to your coworkers for assistance.

Find out what exactly their expectations or preferences are. Ask about their personal process for crafting color palettes. See if there are specific tools they recommend you use.

If you’re feeling inadequate, don’t give up. See if you can get someone to guide you toward a new process or practice.

On the other hand, let’s say your feelings of impostor syndrome have come from something that your manager has said or done, but it wasn’t a direct criticism.

For example, they reassigned one of your tasks to a peer. Do you know for sure why they did it? If you don’t, follow up with them and see if they’ll give you a reason and some feedback. By actively seeking feedback, you may just discover it was a matter of them better allocating resources versus it being a reflection of the quality of your work.

Seeking out the truth can always help when impostor syndrome is getting in the way. It’ll either let you know that your feelings of self-doubt are unfounded or that you do have some areas where you can improve. You lose nothing by asking for guidance and help, and everything to gain.

4. Let Go of Perfectionism

It’s not realistic to seek perfection. Or to wait to turn something in until it’s perfect.

I’m not saying that your work should be full of errors or half done. However, if you’re waiting to reach that so-called perfect version of a website, app, logo or whatever it is you’re building, and then freak out after hitting “Send” because you realized the font size was slightly off, that’s a problem.

We all make mistakes and there are flaws in a lot of the work we produce for the web. We’re human. It’s what happens. So long as you’re paying attention to your clients’ needs and preferences, adhering to best practices and web standards, and doing your level best each time, that’s all that matters.

Once you accept this, you’ll realize it’s not right to put yourself down or abuse yourself for every perceived mistake.

To reiterate what I mentioned before: If it really bothers you to discover a mistake after turning in your work, make note of it. Is there something you can do next time to avoid it?

For instance, let’s say the font in your contact form doesn’t match the font used throughout the Contact page. There’s an easy way to address this particular problem in the future: Revise your process. Instead of manually applying font settings as you add new components, employ a global standard and design system that controls the fonts used throughout.

Let go of this idea of perfection and embrace a mindset of growth and improvement. Find something you don’t like about your process or approach to design or development? Fix it. Don’t let it become something that contributes to the harmful impostor syndrome growing within you.

5. Fake It Until You Make It

For this point, I’m not encouraging you to sell yourself with lies about your background or what you’re capable of. Impostor syndrome relates to feelings of inadequacy when you are already more than adequate, not when you set yourself up for a job you were never a good fit for.

What I mean by “fake it until you make it” is faking confidence and satisfaction with your work.

For example, let’s say it’s time to present the fintech mobile app you created to the client. Don’t present it to them with doubts and negative talk. Instead, take the lead, get excited about the app and show them how amazing it is.

I used to work in customer service and one of the things they used to teach us was to smile every time we picked up the phone. I know, it sounds silly. It’s not like the customer can even see you smile. But there’s research that suggests that forcing a smile on your face can actually impact the way you feel and how you carry yourself.

The same thing can happen when you fake confidence and happiness with your work. By forcing yourself to push the impostor thoughts and statements aside, you get into the habit of reflecting positively on what you do. And once you see that supported by how others react to your work, eventually you’ll realize you were never an impostor.

Another thing to do is catch yourself whenever you use negative words to describe yourself or your work, like “I can’t,” “I hate” or “I won’t.” Rephrase them using positive words. Even just reframing the situation and your thoughts can have a positive effect on your mindset.

This can have long-reaching effects on your career, too.

For instance, once you gain confidence in the everyday tasks you do, you can take things to the next level. With this confidence, you’ll be able to take more risks and accept more challenges. And if you’re hit with another wave of impostor syndrome, don’t sweat it. Even if it doesn’t feel right, your mind will eventually catch up with what everyone else already knows and believes about your capabilities.

Wrapping Up

You are not an impostor. Those feelings and thoughts you’re having? Most creatives get them at some point in their career.

In the beginning, those doubts may come from being a newbie when everyone else around you seems to have it all figured out. It’s natural to wonder if you’re good enough and how long it’ll last as it seems too good to be true.

What’s more, working as a creative is a lot different from, say, an accountant who works with hard facts and numbers. You’re coming up with something completely new. While you’re building something for a client or employer to use, it all comes from within you. And it can be hard to separate yourself from the outcomes or feedback associated with your work.

Impostor syndrome is going to happen. What matters is what you do with it.

I really enjoyed this quote that Dr. Ami Rokach of York University gave to the APA as it shows how impostor syndrome can be turned into a positive:

“Impostor phenomenon is a spectrum, not binary. Just as high achievement can fuel impostor phenomenon in self-doubting people, impostor feelings can fuel high achievement, which would enhance one’s beliefs in his or her abilities and achievement.”

Turmoil and chaos can come from anywhere.

There could be external factors that disrupt the entire world, like lockdowns, recessions and tariffs. There could be factors that impact your work or industry specifically, like the introduction of GDPR, the rise of AI or Google’s cookie deprecation announcement. Then there’s internal chaos caused by layoffs or reorganizations, public backlash against your brand and even problematic clients.

How are you expected to thrive, let alone focus, in the midst of such chaos?

If it feels like you’re constantly stressed and struggling to bring order to your workday, this post is for you. We’ll look at some strategies you can use to proactively and actively deal with chaos, regardless of where it comes from.

Strategies for Navigating Turmoil While You Work

None of us can predict the future. Which means chaos and turmoil are just a natural part of being human.

That said, chaos can bring some not so positive outcomes if you get wrapped up in it. If you need help navigating the chaos within or outside your workplace, here are some strategies to help you adapt and overcome it.

1. Come Up with an Action Plan

According to Merriam-Webster, chaos is:

“a state of utter confusion”

Or:

“a confused mass or mixture”

Let’s assume your workspace isn’t burning down and that the chaos you’re experiencing (internally or externally) is manageable. Then that’s exactly what you need to do. Manage it.

To be clear: You don’t need to solve the problem yourself in order to make the chaos or the effects of it go away. In some cases, that’s not even feasible. But let’s use an example.

Your team consists of web designers, web developers, marketers and a project manager. The project manager just up and quit last night. Your team relies on this person to keep the flow of projects moving smoothly and monitors each task and stakeholder to along the way.

You could ask a project manager from another team to step in, but that doesn’t seem fair. They’re already stretched thin with their own projects. So, what do you do?

It’s OK to feel stressed. However, you and your team need to find a way to pull everything together until someone steps into the project manager role and takes hold of the reins.

Working together to come up with an action plan is your best course of action. Here is what it might look like:

• Contact management about the project manager’s departure and ask for a plan and timeline for hiring a replacement.
• Schedule a 60-minute team meeting for this morning. Put together an agenda for the call.
• Delegate the project manager’s tasks to various team members based on everyone’s capacity. Try to distribute the tasks fairly.
• Get access to the project manager’s accounts (task management tools, email, etc.) and review what’s in there, verifying nothing urgent is waiting on a response.
• Review where each project stands. With the staffing shakeup and additional responsibilities on each person’s plate, adjust the timelines as needed.

Make sure to put your action plan into writing and to formalize it within your workflows and project management tools. Anything that was previously assigned to the project manager will now need to go to the team member in charge of that duty. This will keep everyone’s duties straight and hold people accountable to their share of the work.

By sharing the load with others and coming up with a clear-cut plan, your team will be able to adapt until a better solution comes along. This will prevent people from freezing up, freaking out and throwing your entire organization out of whack.

2. Focus on What You Can Control

Our bodies are hard-wired to respond to danger and chaos, which can make it difficult to sit still or stay calm. But that’s exactly what you need to do in order to get through the situation.

One technique you can use to stay clear-headed is to focus only on that which you can control.

For example, let’s say that a new international regulation like GDPR or the AI Act has been announced. Or maybe something is changing with SEO, like the Google Page Experience update.

In my personal experience, I remember clients panicking over GDPR.

What is it?

Is it only for the EU?

How will it affect my business?

Does this mean I can’t track data anymore?

What if I don’t know how to add a consent banner to my site?

What happens if I miss something and I’m not compliant?

The first thing you can do in these situations is to educate yourself. If you don’t understand what has changed or how the disruption affects your operations, you’re either going to freeze up and take no action or panic endlessly, worrying about every possible worst case scenario. Neither of which is good.

When you have a good grasp of what’s happening, focus on what you have control over. To worry about anything else will only exacerbate your stress and make it difficult to get your work done.

So, let’s say there’s something like GDPR that’s about to go into effect. What should you focus on?

Start by auditing your own website’s data tracking procedures.

• Identify the methods of data collection and the areas of the site where the data is picked up from.
• Review your privacy policy to verify it is transparent about how the data is collected and how it’s used.
• Add tasks to your list to create a cookie consent popup notice and to enable opt-in/opt-out settings for your users.
• Revise your internal data collection and management processes as needed.

Once you’ve got a handle on how to deal with the chaos internally, turn your focus outward. Reach out to clients, informing them about the upcoming changes. Provide a recommended course of action along with a price for this data privacy audit/setup service. Then wait for them to respond (if they choose to). That’s all you can do.

Another thing I would suggest is to spend your time wisely. Let’s say the chaos doesn’t have a direct impact on you. At least, not yet. Take the U.S. tariffs, for example. There’s not a whole lot you can do until you see if they have an impact on your business’s operations.

If you find yourself stressing about this possibility, spend your time instead on making things better behind the scenes. Identify obstacles and inefficiencies in your workflows. Come up with ways to streamline things, like unifying your software, implementing AI automation and creating templates.

Even if the chaos doesn’t have a direct impact, it will have motivated you to focus on what you can control and, regardless of what happens, improve your situation.

3. Know and Avoid Your Stressors

Navigating stressors and triggers while you’re working can be tricky depending on what they are. For instance, let’s say you have a coworker or manager who’s always wreaking havoc when things are coming down to the wire. So, everyone usually has to stay late to scramble and get the job done. In that case, it’s not like you can just avoid that person.

However, as I mentioned earlier, chaos doesn’t always come from inside of one’s organization. Let’s say it’s something bigger that’s happening around the world.

The second someone mentions it or you catch a glimpse of it on social media or your favorite news site, it gets you spiraling. You can’t stop talking about it with coworkers or you start endlessly doom-scrolling online. Suddenly, an hour or two passes and you’re behind on work.

It can be tough when you encounter something that triggers this kind of stress-induced response. But you’ll need to become more aware of it when and even before it happens.

To do this, think back to other times you’ve felt triggered in a similar way. What caused you to go into distraction or obsession mode? And what pulled you out of it and back into a more productive and healthy frame of mind?

Start with the causes. What sorts of turmoil and chaos really gets under your skin? Where have you encountered it in the office or online? When possible, remove those sources of stress from your routine. For instance, if TikTok reels have sent you spiraling before, use a distraction-blocking app to prevent you from visiting TikTok during the day.

Next, look at the ways you’ve disrupted those patterns before. Did you step away from a conversation and go for a walk outside? Did you set a timer that pulled you back to your desk and work? Was there something else that helped?

Lean into your strengths and away from your disruptors. This will help you bring some order out of the chaos and the stress that it brings.

4. Release the Negativity from Your Body

Chaos can create a lot of tension within ourselves. Holding onto that tension and discomfort will only prolong the effects that the chaos has on you (even after it’s passed).

Here are some small things you can do to relieve the negative feelings getting stored up in your body and to reset yourself during these chaotic times:

Smile.
I don’t mean this in the condescending “Why don’t you just smile?” way. I mean this in the scientific way.

Neurologist Dr. Isha Gupta says that smiling creates a chemical reaction in our brains. Feel-good hormones like dopamine and serotonin are released in the process.

“Dopamine increases our feelings of happiness. Serotonin release is associated with reduced stress. Low levels of serotonin are associated with depression and aggression. Low levels of dopamine are also associated with depression.”

In customer service, I was always taught that if you force a smile on your face while speaking (even when you’re on the phone), it can change how you feel at that moment. Anecdotally speaking, it works. And Dr. Gupta explains why in the quote above.

Reframe your thoughts.
If you find yourself having more and more negative thoughts, try to catch yourself while you’re doing it. For instance:

“Everyone sucks.”

Yep, we’ve all been there before. You’re feeling overwhelmed and burned out, and there seems to be no end to the chaos or drama. In the moment, it really can feel like you’re all alone and everyone does suck.

But here’s the thing: Reframing negative thoughts works similarly to putting a smile on your face. By removing negative thought patterns, you can stop the endless cycle of negative emotions from weighing on you.

So, when you catch yourself thinking something like the above statement, change it to something more empathetic like:

“We’re all struggling right now. But we’re going to get through this.”

Even rewording negative statements like “I can’t” into positive ones forces you to shift your emotional state and way of thinking to a more productive one.

This doesn’t mean you need to say “yes” to everything thrown your way. It just means finding a healthier way of framing your response like, “I would like to help with the website audit. However, I have this load test that Client A has been waiting on for 3 days.”

Collaborate and connect.
One of the problems with chaos is that it can throw everything and everyone out of order. It can even force wedges between people. That wedge between you and others doesn’t need to be long-lived though.

So, let’s say word has spread that layoffs are coming. This is not the time to isolate yourself from others, be they your coworkers or your loved ones.

Chaos doesn’t just affect your life, it often affects everyone around you. So, when you find yourself in a tumultuous state, reach out and connect with others. Even if it’s to send an email to a remote coworker to see how they’re doing or to discuss something positive from your lives to take the focus off of what is coming down the line.

Move your body.
During a chaotic time, it’s common to find your body has tensed up. It’s part of our natural responses as humans.

According to this article from Healthline:

“When you experience a stressful event or a bout of anxiety, your muscles contract, sometimes forcefully. This is an automatic or reflex reaction. It’s known as a stress response or ‘fight or flight’ response. It’s your body’s way of gearing up to face a perceived physical threat that you’ll need to fight off or run away from.”

The problem is, you’re not in danger of becoming food for a lion or bear like our long-ago ancestors were (at least I hope not). Yet, your body still responds as if it is. So, you need a way to release that tension so it doesn’t stay with you.

How you move your body is a personal choice. Some people walk out their tension. Others do yoga or pilates. And some hit the gym. Even some light stretching and shaking out your hands and shoulders can be helpful, especially if you don’t have time to immediately address how you feel.

Wrapping Up

Chaos isn’t fun. From the rapid onset to the unpredictability of it all, it can feel almost impossible to get a hold on things while it’s happening.

If you don’t deal with chaos (or, at least, your response to it) the right way, it can lead to feelings of hopelessness and depression. Inevitably, this will lead to burnout.

The good news is that you can adapt to chaotic circumstances. By navigating around the chaos, you won’t get swept up or feel as though you’re drowning in it. And once it passes, you may even come out the other side with a new set of skills and adaptations that build your resilience for whatever the future holds.

Environmental disasters threaten physical infrastructure, software development and business continuity in an interconnected digital world.

In this post, I share my experience with environmental challenges over the last few years and how I have dealt with them. I encourage you to consider these issues in your own life. We can build more resilient software systems that withstand unexpected environmental challenges by learning from our past experiences with power outages, internet disruptions and infrastructure failures.

In the last 10 years, my region has experienced extreme weather like cyclones and the worst flood in 80 years. The flood left me without internet, electricity or running water for several days.

Just think of the various natural disasters that could unexpectedly affect us in different areas of the planet—tsunamis, tornadoes, earthquakes, flooding, etc. Of course these sorts of events can disrupt “business as usual.” But are there ways to mitigate long-term impacts to economic and social development when disaster strikes? How can we prepare for disaster so that when the urgencies settle down we can function even if it’s sub-optimal.

Power Off

Back in 2019, I had on-premises servers. When an extratropical cyclone hit our area, we were without electricity for five days, and all systems shut down.

The cloud wasn’t so common then, but I migrated my systems to the cloud to avoid future disruptions.

Then in 2024, there was a severe flood in my state in Brazil, and my office had no electricity for 27 days, while at home I had no running water for 14 days and no internet access.

We faced complete chaos, not knowing how to deal with the situation or how long it would last, and in the end it was worse than we could have expected. It also affected commerce, disrupting our daily routines while we waited for the water levels to go down. Donations from other Brazilian states and international sources prevented the situation from worsening. Still today, while I write this post in 2025, some people do not have a home to return to after this flood.

While this was happening, thanks to my experience in 2019, all my business systems were already operating on cloud infrastructure, minimizing the impact on my business. I am grateful I had a USB wireless adapter to connect my PC to the smart phone 5G signal in the midst of all this, so I could work on some projects and do consultancy without too much interference.

How would you fare if you were without internet? What about power? Do you have ways to maintain your business in case of extenuating circumstances?

Developing software without internet infrastructure is increasingly challenging, since so many modern activities rely on the internet, with its connected services and servers on cloud or on-premises. I try to keep a copy of my cloud infrastructure (databases and CDNs) so that I can continue working without the internet. But this is not a typical case. I know some systems need a massive infrastructure to operate a single API. You may need offline access to documentation, APIs and other software development infrastructure.

Backup and Contingency Plan

What is your plan if you have a ransomware attack? Ransomware can be compared to the disruption of physical infrastructure or a power outage. And what if your on-premises server goes down? Do you have a copy or systems running on a redundant cloud server like Azure, AWS, Google Cloud or Virtual Private Server (VPS) in a secure location? This scenario has a high cost to maintain and should be less than what you would lose if you lost your data, access and systems.

Having copies of files is important, but so is knowing the backup’s last version and where it is stored.

Below, I suggest a template to register your backup copies:

Documentation and Communication

We need a documented guide to restore our systems and services to respond immediately to a critical event. This guide should include a list of services, URLs, users, passwords and how to recover lost credentials. Keep printed versions in multiple physical locations, with clear recovery instructions that your team can easily access and regularly update—and it must be easy for the recovery team to access.

Below, I suggest a template to register services to be restored:

To help us be ready, we can learn from chaos engineering:

“Chaos engineering can be used to achieve resilience against infrastructure, network, and application failures.”

— https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_engineering

This discipline helps us follow the leaders in this technology, like Google and Netflix, to create tools that help us prevent and learn how to deal with disasters. And this is not only in the software category; we can unplug certain services in use and observe how we will deal with them while they are down or what we will do if they fail. I recommend doing this during off-peak hours.

Conclusion

Last month, my ISP’s cloud servers went down due to a configuration mistake. So, I learned something new: I need a second cloud to substitute and a development environment with tags/constants OFF_LINE to continue working. This is a journey of learning through experience. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution for addressing these challenges.

Sample of OFF_LINE constant in Visual Studio projects:

OFF_LINE constant in Visual Studio

The important thing is to learn from the experience, avoid new risks in the future and keep your business running smoothly. I was lucky to pass these events one at a time, and I hope you can learn from my shared experiences too.

Image from Microsoft Copilot prompt

In this post, I’ll discuss my experience building personas for my products and extending those personas to role models. Personas are a psychological term that describes how we construct mental profiles of individuals in our minds with their personalities. The role models are archetypal ideals that complement and motivate particular personas. Role models go beyond individuals to provide a methodical framework for understanding actions, motives and decisions.

When we develop a product, we need to create a target public and build a persona. The persona is made by giving an imaginary person an age, a gender and social and economic circumstances. We can create some personas to start selling our products and/or services to these personas. This is a marketing strategy.

While building software, I design mainly for the specific model of public lawyers. I have a business that produces software for law companies that could cause harmful consequences if the software fails, including millions of dollars in potential loss from lawsuits.

I’ll explain how I use persona models during development of such software. It is a mental exercise you might already be familiar with.

What goes on in the developer’s mind while coding?

1. It starts with the language programming role model. We imagine how the machine will process our code and how to get it to correctly accomplish the requirements. We have the grammar and lexical logic of the programming in mind.
2. Secondly, we imagine the solution’s environments, whether it works on desktop, web, server-side, API, cloud, etc., and how it will work in production.
3. After that, we imagine how the data produced will be processed and consumed as a user interface or API and how the software will act in the natural environment.

Most of our developers are good at these three steps, but there are others to consider.

I use the following steps to help me finish my work and avoid problems. I build role models of different types of users: a user who knows nothing about IT, a user who doesn’t like IT and a user who hates IT and/or is lazy.

So, I “load” these role models into my mind and start thinking about them one by one while using my interfaces, mimicking the behavior of the current role model and asking myself, as a developer/UX professional, what I could do better to help this role model finish their task successfully. Likewise, you can “talk” with your role model as a real person—ask a question from yourself as the developer and answer as the persona you have in mind. With time, they will start giving you feedback and ideas like a real person. This is the magic of the role models.

Creating role models from scratch is hard, so you can base them on people you already know. It’s valid to create one from your aunt who hates technology, and perhaps one based on a coworker who loves it. From there, you can play around with the picture you have of them in your mind. Maybe your model is less clever or has stronger opinions about a particular aspect. Establish a clear idea of your personas before moving on.

Next Steps

Next, consider these areas of UI from the perspective of each of your personas:

1. What will the end user understand from the interface? It would help if you guided them in considering what they need to do in order to perform the task correctly. Ask your role model in your mind.
2. It would help if you imagined what the role model would understand about the forms’ error validation messages, tips and labels—the big picture and the details.
3. You need to imagine the user’s attitude toward accomplishing the task. Will they tap/click the right button and do it in the correct sequence?

Is this enough? I often imagine the worst-case consequences in the work I do, like someone losing something because of my software and as a result pursuing legal action against me.

I even go so far as to imagine myself giving testimonial to a judge. I want to feel with certainty that I have done everything with care. As I said before, this line of thinking has caused me to discontinue development of some software services because there was a high possibility of unpredictable errors, putting the customer at too much risk.

But sometimes we need to deliver an MVP or finish development and we aren’t the final decision-makers. So, what do I do if I see that a bad situation could happen? I pass along two options to solve the problem to the owners and/or stockholders so they can consider the best solution.

In development, we can make documentation on the Git commits and write comments about our concerns. But, please, be careful not to leave incriminating comments. Noting concerns in the code can help the following colleagues find a solution.

Conclusion

I’ve been using this role model approach to develop and validate my software for a long time. At first, I didn’t know the name for it, or that I was using the psychology role model, only discovering it in my postgraduate studies in neuroscience.

Building a persona is not enough. You need to recreate the minds of your audience and help them accomplish their tasks without suffering or avoiding errors, leading them to success with your solution.

The information provided on this blog does not, and is not intended to, constitute legal advice. Any reader who needs legal advice should contact their counsel to obtain advice with respect to any particular legal matter. No reader, user or browser of this content should act or refrain from acting on the basis of information herein without first seeking legal advice from counsel in their relevant jurisdiction.

If you’ve ever felt lost in your career or frustrated with the work you’re doing, it may be because it’s out of alignment with your personal values.

Core values are often touted by organizations on their About pages and in their employee manuals. These values tell the world “This is what we stand for!” Truth. Integrity. Dependability. Diversity. Innovation. These are all examples of core company values.

But what about you? Whether you’re a freelancer or employed, finding out what matters most to you and what drives you can be extremely beneficial in your personal and professional life.

If you’ve been feeling stuck, frustrated or aimless recently, working out what your values are may help. In this post, we’ll look at what personal values are, how to find out what yours are and how to turn them into principles that guide your professional decisions going forward.

Core Values and Why They Matter

Values are the characteristics or ideals that a person or organization aims to live by and prioritizes above all else. Here are some examples of personal and professional values you might have or encounter in others:

• Adaptability
• Community
• Compassion
• Courage
• Courtesy
• Craftsmanship
• Curiosity
• Discipline
• Health
• Independence
• Loyalty
• Optimism
• Self-respect
• Sustainability
• Teamwork

When you start working for someone, they may give you a rundown on the company’s mission, vision and core values. This isn’t because they want to brag about what amazing work they’re doing or what good people they are.

A well-defined set of values allows a company and its employees or contractors to get on the same page about what matters most. It also makes decision-making much easier as values and the driving principles derived from them remove most questions about how you’re supposed to act or what you’re supposed to do.

For example, let’s say that discipline, innovation and gratitude are a company’s three core values. Here’s how those values might be translated into principles that guide the day-to-day operation of a company:

We Value Discipline: Our clients aren’t going to be content with getting their SEO audit and recommendations whenever it’s most convenient for us. Nor should they be. The second the ink dries on the contract, we get to work. We understand that time is of the essence when it comes to SEO and that our clients have no time to waste. And so we won’t. Every deadline promised will be met and the task completed in full.

We Value Innovation: We don’t want or like to rest on our laurels. What has worked for us for five years might be just fine, but we know that there’s always more we can do to be better—to create a better dining experience for our customers, to create a culture that makes employees feel like family and to drive company growth farther than ever. As such, we fully embrace innovation and we aren’t afraid of change.

We Value Gratitude: We have been in business since 2009 and we’ve been rated Austin’s #1 car wash since 2018. We recognize that none of this would’ve been possible without our rock star team of employees. As a token of our appreciation and in recognition of their hard work, we issue performance-based bonuses every quarter and offer various means of career advancement.

As you can see, when values get turned into principles, there’s clearer guidance for everyone involved. Principles effectively take a value and translate it into what actions you’ll take to uphold that value.

For instance, a company that values innovation would never encourage employees (or even hire ones to begin with) who take shortcuts. Nor would they want employees to stop short simply because the competition doesn’t go above and beyond.

Values-based principles are also a great way to differentiate oneself from the competition. Whether a company is looking to close more business or to woo employees away from competitors, having clear values and principles laid out like this can be a huge advantage.

Examples of Company Values

Let’s have a look at some real world examples of “Our Values” pages so you can get a sense for what kinds of values different companies uphold and how it works to their, their employees’ and their end users’ advantage:

Chick-Fil-A Values

On the Chick-Fil-A company culture page, the company espouses the following values:

• Service
• Cooperation
• Impactfulness
• Adaptation

As you can see, the website doesn’t phrase the values in such a way. Instead, they’re phrased in more relatable and motivational terms like “We’re here to serve” and “We’re better together.”

Mayo Clinic Values

What’s interesting about Mayo Clinic’s values is that it all starts with one core institutional value that puts the needs of the patients before everything else. The organization has then established a lengthy list of values and traits that support this overarching value, which includes:

• Respect
• Integrity
• Compassion
• Healing
• Teamwork
• Innovation
• Excellence
• Stewardship

What’s great about the way this one is set up is that, even though they might have a disparate set of values, there’s a simple explanation for how they fit together. It’s all about the patients’ needs. Without these values, the Mayo Clinic wouldn’t be able to meet or exceed them.

Haddad Brands Values

Haddad Brands is the parent company for well-known brands like Converse, Nike, Ralph Lauren and Huggies.

They’ve created an acronym for their brands: CAN DO ATTUDE. It stands for:

• Collaboration builds teamwork
• Attitude is everything
• No is not in our vocabulary
• Do the right thing
• Obsess relationships
• Always be humble, yet confident
• Through perseverance comes success
• Thank you goes a long way
• Understand & appreciate differences
• Don’t forget to have fun
• Execution is everything

While many companies keep their values list to a manageable number—usually between three and five—Haddad Brands has 11. The acronym is a good way to help employees (and even customers) remember what they are.

Spinutech Values

Spinutech is a digital agency with four core values:

• “We get better every day” (continuous growth)
• “We do the right thing” (integrity)
• “We over me” (teamwork)
• “We own it” (personal accountability)

These aren’t just catchphrases that appear on the agency’s website. As you can see in this photo from the page, the values are written on the walls behind the employees as they work.

Progress Values

Progress has its own set of values as well—ProgressPROUD. In total, there are five values that Progress holds near and dear:

• Progress collaboratively
• Respect differences
• Own our tomorrow, today
• Uphold trust
• Dare to innovate

Not only do these values make internal decision-making simpler, they also inspire the team as they work on building technologies that transform digital experience design.

How to Find Out What Your Values Are

If you’ve never considered what your values are before, there are some simple ways to discover them now.

For starters, look back on your life and ask yourself:

What have been your proudest moments? Why?

Also, was there something about you or the people you were with that made you feel proud?

For example, let’s say there was a major storm in your area like a hurricane or tornado. Not only had you and your family planned well in advance for it by stocking up on supplies and fueling your car, you managed to get out of town in time. While it was inconvenient, you were able to work from a hotel for a few days while the storm debris was cleared out and power was restored.

From that, you could infer that you value qualities like organization and resiliency.

Another thing you could do is look at your biggest sources of inspiration. For instance, they could be family members, friends, famous people, teachers or others.

As you reflect on those whom you admire, are there certain traits they share? Do you possess those traits as well or wish you had them? You may have found some more core values right there.

One last thing you could do is to look at what frustrates or angers you. Essentially, what is it about others that you dislike and deem wrong or unethical?

For this, you might look at your worst employment experience. Perhaps you had a boss who played favorites and was unfair. Or there was a coworker who never carried their share of the load and was always late.

By examining the flaws in character that upset you, you’ll discover more about what you stand for and what kind of person you want to be in life as well as at your job.

The Benefits of Defining Your Own Values

Just because your employer or client has established what’s most important in the running of their organization, that doesn’t mean it’s not worth it to define your own values.

Sure, if you agree to work for them, you’ll need to abide by their core values. But before you get to that point, ask yourself:

Do you even want to work for a company whose values are misaligned with your own?

That’s just one reason why you should figure out what matters most to you.

Values and principles aren’t just for enterprises and other companies. Here are some other reasons why it’s beneficial to come up with values that matter personally to you:

• You get to create the rulebook for how you live your life, which will give it more meaning.
• You’ll find greater job satisfaction and fulfillment if you choose employers or clients with similar values and motivations.
• You’ll find that the work you do turns out better as you’re motivated by greater ideals than just turning a profit.
• When prospective employers or collaborators ask who you are, you can confidently speak about what you stand for and why.
• Having a core set of values will make you much more reliable and authentic, which will help you build stronger relationships and greater job stability.
• If you ever feel lost in terms of what to do next with your life or work, your values can help guide you.

Whether you’re looking to achieve greater success or be happier with your life, establishing these fundamental values will help.

The Progress Champions program is a recognition for the best in our software industry—for developers, designers, architects, advocates, partners and forward thinkers. We’ve transformed our individual offerings into a unified Champions program—this allows us to create stronger, more impactful presence within the developer community. We’ve started off with Developer Tools and Sitefinity, with the ultimate goal to include the entire portfolio of Progress products—MOVEit joins us in 2025. This will be an annual honor program with year-end nominations, evaluations in November/December and inductions/renewals in January/February.

Renewed Champions

Progress Software has a big portfolio of products—but modern developers often relate to Progress for a collection of UI component suites, frameworks and tools. This we collectively call Developer Tools—it includes Telerik UI suites for all things .NET, Kendo UI suites for all things JavaScript, reporting products, testing solutions, design/UX utilities, network debugging with Fiddler and other developer productivity tools.

Developers learn from each other’s experiences, and it’s easy to share a love for tooling that makes developers more productive. Progress has always recognized and honored outstanding folks in the software community—influencers who lead with success, share knowledge and drive the developer community forward with empathy. We’re glad to renew this year’s group of Progress Champions in the Developer Tools space—you’re all awesome and we’re glad to have you as friends.

• Joseph Guadagno | US
• Dan Siegel | Honduras
• Layla Porter | UK
• Chris Sainty | UK
• Chris Gardner | US
• Carey Payette | US
• Leomaris Reyes | Dominican Republic
• Chen Weizhi | Singapore
• Daniel Hindrikes | Sweden
• Jefferson S. Motta | Brazil
• Jimmy Engstrom | Sweden
• Eric Johansson | Sweden
• Dhananjay Kumar | India
• Chris DeMars | US
• Jessica Engstrom | Sweden
• John Bristowe | Australia
• Dany Paredes | Spain
• Robert Boedigheimer | US

New Champions

Developer technologies like .NET/JS evolve fast. Some thrive in the challenges and inspire others to be successful. We’re delighted to bring on board several new Progress Champions for 2025. They come from around the world with strong developer backgrounds and freely share their passion for technology, in addition to love for Telerik/Kendo UI products. A very warm welcome to our exceptional developer friends.

Modern web, mobile and desktop apps often strive for delightful UX, and beautifully styled UI design is one way to achieve the goal. However, there has traditionally been some friction in the designer-developer handoff workflows—it helps to understand some basic tenets of good UX and designing software. We're delighted to welcome some wonderful folks from the design/UX worlds—let there be light.

And congratulations to the Progress Sitefinity Champions, named on the Progress.com blog.

Rewards

Progress Champions represent the very best in our community. Their commitment to excellence and collaboration is what moves us forward, and we are proud to be a part of their journey toward continued success. Like with most honor programs, we recognize all that Progress Champions do and lead with empathy, but we also have a few expectations—most Champions will easily go above and beyond.

Progress Champions are awesome, deserving of our unending love and adoration—and a few tangible benefits. We celebrate our Progress Champions with a range of exclusive perks and value our continued collaboration.

• Digital Progress Champions badge for web/signature use
• Corresponding physical die-cut stickers
• Custom designed gift with corresponding badge
• Perpetual crystal trophy | Annual plaques each year
• Access to Dev Advocates/PMs/Engineering through Slack channel
• Early insight into Progress product strategy & roadmaps
• Opportunities for beta product testing & feedback
• Invitation to Progress Appreciation Summit
  • Annual/quarterly virtual meetups
  • Broader strategies & industry insights from Progress leadership
  • Product feedback sessions
• Invitation to submit to speak at Progress events around the globe
  • DevReach/ProgressNext/Meetups/Partner Summits
• Social media promotion | Profile on Progress Champions website
• Press release & community livestreams showcasing Progress Champions
• Telerik & Kendo UI Annual Licenses with Lite Support
• Fiddler Everywhere annual subscription
• Our love & respect

Come Join

The Progress Champions program showcases excellence in the developer community and the passion to educate others to be more successful. If you work with Progress technologies, we appreciate the partnership. If you are passionate about Telerik UI suites for all things .NET, Kendo UI suites for all things JavaScript, reporting suites, testing solutions, design utilities, network debugging with Fiddler or other developer productivity tools from Progress Software, we want to know. Know someone else who would be great fit to be a Progress Champion—we’re all ears. Nominations are open year-round. Evaluations will be in November/December 2025 for the next calendar year—we want to see your names.

Want to know more about the program? Drop us a line at champions@progress.com.

Upwards and onwards with Progress Champions—cheers.

According to a Talkspace business article, stress can have a huge impact on your work. For example, here are some of the common side effects:

• Burnout
• Demotivation
• Lack of job satisfaction
• Physical health issues
• Mental health problems
• Lowered productivity
• Increased absenteeism
• Greater interpersonal conflicts

Whether that stress comes from the job itself, your workplace, personal life or the general state of the world, it’s going to have far-reaching effects on your life and work. That’s especially so the longer it goes on for.

In this post, we’ll examine the toll that long-term stress takes on our bodies and minds as well as five science-backed, stress-busting techniques you can try.

Is Stress Affecting Your Work?

A Gallup poll done in 2023 found that only 34% of workers felt as though they were thriving in their lives.

High levels of stress could be to blame. According to the American Institute of Stress:

“Prolonged stress poses risks for various mental health challenges, heightens sensitivity to daily stressors, affects overall life outlook and goals and impacts the body’s physiological stress response, with significant implications for physical health.”

(Emphasis added by me.)

Gallup also found that about half (49%) of the people they surveyed said they frequently experience stress.

Sustained stress does terrible things to the body. For example, it keeps the body on high alert, which in turn increases inflammation and decreases the immune system’s ability to fight. Over time, people can develop a number of ailments from being in this ever-stressed state, like weight gain, digestive issues, heart problems and more.

It can also impact how you feel in the short term. A ValuePenguin survey found that people most commonly reported these symptoms in response to elevated stress levels:

• Sleep difficulties (54%)
• Physical issues and pain (38%)
• Mental health problems (36%)
• Overeating or undereating (27%)
• Emotional dysregulation (27%)
• Not enjoying hobbies (25%)
• Strained personal relationships (22%)
• Decreased job performance (12%)

Stress and anxiety and depression seem to go hand-in-hand as well. The UK Mental Health Foundation reported that 51% of people experiencing stress were also depressed while 61% felt anxious.

Feeling unwell in any aspect of your life is likely to lead to issues in other areas. So, whether you’re bringing that stress from your job into your personal life or vice versa, it’s likely going to cause a host of problems.

Next, we’ll look at strategies to help you minimize the toll that stress takes on your body, mind, relationships and work.

Techniques That Can Help Lower Stress

To start, I want to say that I’m not a medical professional nor do I make any guarantee that these techniques will work for you. What you’ll find below, however, are strategies that have been studied by scientists and have been shown to improve stress-related symptoms for some people.

The ValuePenguin study mentioned above found that 92% of the people who practice stress management strategies find them helpful. So, if you’re struggling, it’s worth testing them out to see if they can give you some relief during your workday and as you go about your life.

1. Sound Therapy

Sound therapy is the usage of sounds, vibrations or music to promote relaxation.

Dr. Olivia Hsu Friedman says this about sound therapy:

“When human beings hear external vibration, entrainment occurs, or the synchronization of that person’s biology with the vibration. This creates a stable frequency, meaning it helps you downshift from normal beta state (normal waking consciousness) to alpha (relaxed consciousness), and even theta (meditative state) and delta (sleep, when internal healing occurs).”

Specifically, Dr. Friedman says that sound therapy can help with:

• Stress reduction
• Reduced muscle tension
• Improved sleep
• Increased confidence
• Greater energy

It can also repair the negative effects of some health conditions.

There are all kinds of sounds you can use for stress-reducing and therapeutic purposes. It all depends on what specific sounds put you at ease and what types of environments you’re most comfortable in.

For example, at home you could play a white noise machine, put on a Spotify music channel you love or listen to a playlist of your favorite soothing sounds. Another option is to listen to ambient sounds, from home or out in nature. These might include the sound of rainfall, ocean waves, birds chirping, a fire crackling or something else entirely.

Sound baths are another form of sound therapy. During these sessions, the practitioner usually plays instruments like a gong or chimes and will do some chanting.

According to yoga therapist Christina Resasco:

“Sound therapy is deeply rooted in science and based on the principles of quantum physics and sacred geometry. There are hundreds of clinical trials and peer-reviewed white paper studies on the healing properties of sound. In fact, Western medicine uses sound waves on a daily basis in the form of ultrasound technology, which can be used to break up kidney stones among other things.”

Although sound baths might not be as convenient as in-home sound therapy methods, it seems to be a highly effective way to beat stress.

2. Laugh

According to psychiatry professor Dr. William Fry, laughter offers a great physical workout:

“We have a lot of evidence that shows mirth and laughter affect most of the major physical systems of the body. You can get a really good workout from it. The muscle activity involved is the same as is involved in exercising. It’s not as vigorous as calisthenics or training in terms of intensity, but you can laugh a lot more times a day than you can do push-ups.”

Laughter apparently has lots of healing properties. According to a summary from the Mayo Clinic, these are some of the positive effects of a good laughing session:

• Increased endorphins
• Improved respiration
• Stimulation of the heart, lungs and muscles
• Stress relief
• Easing of tension

Injecting lots of laughter in your life can also improve your health long-term. It can boost your immune system response, provide pain relief, enhance your mood and increase your satisfaction with life overall.

There are numerous studies that have examined the direct correlation between laughing and stress.

For instance, this paper examined eight relevant studies. It reported that laughter was associated with a 31.9% decrease in cortisol levels.

Cortisol is the hormone that our bodies release to help regulate stress. So, according to these studies, we’re able to actively lower it (and our stress response) through laughter.

3. Grounding

Grounding is the act of standing on or touching the earth. According to WebMD, grounding has the ability to heal and rejuvenate:

“Grounding, also known as earthing, is when you stand on the earth or have contact with a product that’s grounded into the earth. This connects your body to the natural electric charge of the earth, transferring electrons into your body. Some research shows that soaking up electrons can lower inflammation, ease stress and improve sleep, to name a few.”

Grounding might not always be feasible to practice depending on where you live or what time of year it is. However, there are plenty of grounding products like mats, bed sheets and even socks you can use as a substitute.

Now, while the WebMD description above is the most common form of grounding that people think of, there are other ways to ground yourself when you’re experiencing stress. The goal is to connect your body with nature and/or disconnect your mind from what’s happening externally and to turn it inward.

Here are some other grounding activities that might work for you:

• Hold an object in your hands and focus on the sensation.
• Breathe in a healing scent, like flowers or essential oils.
• Sit outside and listen to the ambient sounds around you.
• Go for a walk and focus on the rhythm of your steps.
• Practice the 5-4-3-2-1 method and reconnect with your senses.

Using your breath to regain control of your physical and mental state is another form of grounding that’s easy to practice. There are various methods you can try. For instance:

Deep breathing is a good one to start with. When practicing this method, take a deep breath in for four seconds. Hold it for another four seconds. Then slowly exhale for six seconds.

According to Freeman Valentine:

“Deep and slow breathing activates the vagus nerves and leads to a reduction in anxiety and stress responses.”

Being more mindful of how long you’re breathing for and taking a few moments to pause also helps you recenter yourself.

Box breathing is another effective technique. In this one, your breath remains consistent throughout. So, you’ll breathe in for four seconds, hold for four seconds, exhale for four seconds and hold once more for four seconds.

It should only take a few rounds of completing this “box” to start feeling more calm.

Progressive muscle relaxation (PMR) is a good one to try out if you don’t feel engaged enough when just sitting and breathing.

In PMR, you lie down and tense different parts of your body, starting from your toes and working your way up to your head (or vice versa). As you hold the tension in your body, you breathe in. Then you release the tension and your breath at the same time.

Progressive muscle relaxation has been shown to relax both our physiological and psychological states.

4. Exercise

Moving your body can help your mind relax and destress. According to this Exercising to Relax post from Harvard Health:

“The mental benefits of aerobic exercise have a neurochemical basis. Exercise reduces levels of the body’s stress hormones, such as adrenaline and cortisol. It also stimulates the production of endorphins, chemicals in the brain that are the body’s natural painkillers and mood elevators. Endorphins are responsible for the ‘runner’s high’ and for the feelings of relaxation and optimism that accompany many hard workouts—or, at least, the hot shower after your exercise is over.”

According to Healthline, many types of workouts can help reduce stress and induce a sense of calm. For instance:

• Brisk walking
• Swimming
• Dancing
• Jogging
• Rowing
• Weightlifting

There are also non-exercise activities you can do at a moderate pace that can result in a similar effect, like gardening and walking up and down stairs.

The trick to using exercise to reduce stress is to find an activity or workout you enjoy. That way, you can practice it long-term without having to battle burnout, boredom or stagnation.

While Healthline recommends many moderate-paced exercises for stress reduction, mind-body movements can be just as potent.

For example, the health benefits of yoga have long been studied. According to Stanford Lifestyle Medicine:

“[T]here is evidence of changes in both brain structure and function related to the practice of yoga. These include changes in the prefrontal cortex (PFC), amygdala, hippocampus and default mode network (DMN). The PFC manages our highest-order cognitive abilities, such as decision-making and goal-setting. Stress and other strong emotions can negatively impact the abilities of the PFC.

Research shows that regular yoga practice leads to increased activation of the PFC and thus may counteract deleterious effects of stress on the brain. Further, yoga impacts the activity of the amygdala, which is involved in processing emotions.”

Qigong and Tai Chi are other mind-body practices that can help battle stress and a host of other physical and emotional ailments.

Through a combination of targeted stretching, meditative movements and breathing, these more gentler and mindful types of exercises can help bring on a greater sense of calm.

5. Connection

In Gallup’s 2023 State of the Global Workplace report, they asked respondents about loneliness. Specifically, they wanted to know what percentage of people felt lonely a lot during the previous day.

On average, 20% of people responded feeling that way. However, there was a significant difference in who reported feeling significant loneliness based on work environments:

• 25% of fully remote workers
• 21% of hybrid workers
• 16% of fully on-site workers

It’s no surprise that workers isolated from others experience greater levels of loneliness.

But why are we looking at loneliness when what we’re talking about is stress? Well, stress and loneliness appear to have a close relationship with one another.

According to the UK Mental Health Foundation, 37% of people who experienced stress also said they felt lonely as a direct result of that stress.

It works the other way around, too. People are better able to navigate stressful circumstances in their lives when they feel supported and connected to others. This 2022 study shows how having social support can make one more resilient to the effects of stress.

Whether you work from home or in an office, you may be dealing with that one-two punch of stress and loneliness. Even if you don’t have a strong social network to tap into, there are plenty of ways to reap the stress-busting benefits of connection. For example:

• Spend time with family
• Go out to eat with friends
• Get to know your neighbors
• Join social groups on Meetup and other apps
• Attend classes at the gym
• Take classes or courses at your local community college
• Do volunteer work in your community
• Become a mentor or tutor for students in your area
• Join local professional organizations

In Erin L. George’s post on Socialization And Altruistic Acts As Stress Relief, she recommends:

“It’s also important to establish boundaries within your personal relationships to keep them healthy. The ability to say ‘no’ to social interactions you aren’t comfortable with and balancing social obligations with independent self-care is imperative for socialization to serve as a stress relief. Like anything, too much of a good thing can also become a stressor.”

So, similar to finding a workout or activity that brings you joy, do the same with developing outlets for connection. Quantity does not trump quality in this matter, so try out maybe one or two of these methods and find something that resonates with you.

Wrapping Up

Stress affects us all, and in many different ways. Just because it seems to be a nearly universal problem these days doesn’t mean you should accept it as a normal part of life.

Stress can have a devastating impact on your health and wellbeing, both in your personal life as well as your productive professional one as well. And even if it seems like a minor nuisance right now, long-term stress has a tendency to boil over and lead to problems with sleep, pain, brain fog, emotional dysregulation, strained relationships and more.

The good news is that there are well-known and science-backed techniques you can use to reduce your stress levels. While not all of them will work for you, it’s worth giving the recommendations above a try to see which ones do. Then, set aside some time every week or so to practice them in addition to breaking them out when you’re feeling overwhelmed.

Meet Aleja

In this edition of #WomenInspiringPeople, we’re thrilled to spotlight Aleja Henao Espitia, a trailblazer who has embodied the power of technology and leadership from an early age. Aleja’s journey into tech began at just 17 when she took on a project manager role, proving that age is no barrier when driven by passion. Her story is a testament to how strong leadership and dedication can open doors, break down barriers and inspire young professionals everywhere.

Currently, Aleja serves as head of growth at Dapta, where she plays a pivotal role in streamlining AI integration into everyday business processes. Her work focuses on a low-code platform that connects various tools with advanced AI, empowering companies to automate workflows, boost efficiency and unlock new growth opportunities. Her expertise extends across growth marketing, AI integration and project management—a skill set honed over years of hands-on experience in the startup ecosystem.

Aleja is dedicated to creating supportive learning environments, launching initiatives that connect emerging talent with industry experts and fostering networks that guide others in navigating STEM fields. Beyond her professional life, she enjoys sharing her journey on social media and embraces travel, culinary adventures and quality time with family. She is especially grateful for the support of her close-knit family, who are present at every significant milestone.

Aleja’s story underscores the transformative power of resilience, inclusion and community-building in the tech world. She exemplifies how a passion for technology and a commitment to mentorship can drive impactful change, inspiring the next generation to thrive in the digital landscape.

We had the opportunity to interview Aleja to get to know her better and hear her valuable advice. Our first question was for Aleja to tell us a little bit about herself in her own words, as well as some tips based on her experience!

Aleja, tell us a little about your story, who you are, how you started in the technology world.

I am Aleja, a self-taught professional passionate about technology, entrepreneurship and community-building. My journey began when, at 17, I took on the role of project manager, challenging expectations and proving that young women can lead. Over the past four years, I’ve worked in several startups, gaining experience in growth marketing, project management and AI integration. My passion lies in leveraging technology to empower women and youth through community-driven initiatives, particularly in tech professional development.

I’ve organized events, developed educational content, and built strategies that have grown our community to over 4,000 active members. My mission is to create inclusive spaces where emerging talent connects with industry professionals, empowering underrepresented groups to thrive in the digital economy. Traveling, spending time with family and friends, trying new foods and creating social media content are things I deeply enjoy.

Tell us a phrase that describes you as a professional.

I consider myself a unicorn , the most creative among technicians and the most technical among creatives.

How old were you when you first stepped into the world of technology?

17 years old.

Define what technology is for you in a word.

“Empowerment.”

Tell us some curious information about yourself that you want to share.

Making PowerPoint presentations for your dolls as a child became that I now share experiences to create and help more people grow in technology. My biggest dream is to go see a rocket take off at NASA.

In your tech career, what has been your biggest challenge? Could you share a bit about it?

One of the biggest challenges in my technological career has been breaking into leadership roles at a young age, particularly in environments where both age and gender biases persist. Starting as a project manager at 17, I often found myself in rooms where I was either the youngest or the only woman, which made it difficult to gain immediate trust and credibility. There were moments when I had to work twice as hard to prove that I belonged and that my ideas could lead to meaningful results.

What learning did that challenge give you?

These challenges have shaped me into a more resilient and resourceful professional. They’ve also fueled my passion for empowering other young people and women to overcome similar obstacles in their careers. I’ve made it a priority to build inclusive communities and mentoring spaces where individuals feel supported and have access to the knowledge they need to succeed, no matter their background or circumstances.

What advice would you give to someone who is unsure about pursuing a career in STEM?

I would recommend that you explore freely: try courses, attend events and join communities to discover what you are passionate about. Connect with professionals to get information and see the various opportunities available. Remember that progress in STEM comes through curiosity and persistence; you don’t need to have it all figured out from the start. The skills you acquire are transferable to all sectors and, with the right support from communities and mentors, you will gain confidence along the way.

What advice would you give to those currently working in STEM?

My tip is to stay curious and keep learning—technology evolves rapidly, and continuous growth is essential to stay relevant. Embrace challenges as opportunities to grow, and don’t be afraid to step outside your comfort zone by exploring new fields or tools. Building strong networks is equally important; connect with peers, mentors and communities to exchange knowledge and collaborate on projects. Lastly, remember to prioritize well-being—burnout is real in fast-paced environments, so make time for rest, hobbies and personal connections to maintain balance and stay motivated.

What advice would you give to a person who wants to have a successful profile like yours?

My advice is to take initiative and embrace lifelong learning. Start by seeking out opportunities, whether it’s volunteering, joining tech communities or participating in events. Don’t wait for the perfect moment; dive into projects that challenge you and help you grow. Building a personal brand is also key—create content that reflects your expertise and passions, and actively share your journey on platforms like LinkedIn. Networking plays a huge role in success, so connect with people in your field and seek mentors who can guide you. Surround yourself with communities that align with your interests.

Lastly, be patient and consistent. Success takes time, but every experience, challenge and learning opportunity adds value to your profile. Stay focused on your goals, enjoy the process and don’t forget to give back by mentoring others along the way.

Finally, I would like you to give us some advice to your readers on how you organize your time, especially when you have large projects and a high profile like yours.

To manage time effectively with large projects, break tasks into smaller steps and prioritize what’s urgent. I really love to use tools like Notion and Google Calendar to plan deadlines and milestones. Be selective about commitments and learn to say “no” when necessary. Lastly, prioritize self-care—balance is key to staying productive and achieving long-term goals.

Did You Enjoy the Interview?

If so, make sure to connect with her on LinkedIn and take note of all the valuable tips Aleja shared! I hope this interview inspired and motivated you on your own journey.

I’ll take this opportunity to share some links to Aleja’s talks: ❤️✨

• From MVP to Production: A Plan to Implement AI in Your Company
• Integrate AI to Automate Workflows
• The Impact of AI on Work
• Strategies and Tools to Attract More Clients
• How to create a successful MVP with AI and Low Code?

See you in the next article!

If you’ve decided to start your journey in technology, I understand how exciting and challenging the process of finding your first job in this field can be. I vividly remember when I got my first job in tech; the excitement I felt knowing that everything I had learned would finally be put into practice in a real company was indescribable.

It’s true that this process can be challenging, as many companies often require some level of experience, which can limit opportunities at this early stage. But don’t worry—I’d like to share my personal recommendations, some of which I’ve applied directly, and others I’ve picked up over the years through experience. I hope they help you in your first job search too. Let’s dive in!

1. Showcase Your Projects

Even if you don’t have formal work experience yet, showcasing your personal projects can make a big difference. When you’re learning to program, it’s common to build several projects to practice what you’ve learned, and this counts as experience too. These projects demonstrate to potential employers that you possess the skills they’re looking for.

I remember my first job interview—I had all my projects at hand and presented them to the interviewer. I asked for the chance to explain each one, and, to my surprise, the interviewer was genuinely impressed by what I had built. In fact, he even asked me several questions about them!

2. Use GitHub

As indicated in the previous point, showcasing your projects is important, but it’s much harder to do if they’re just sitting on your computer. By uploading them to a repository like GitHub, you not only make it easier for others to view your work, but you also demonstrate your understanding of Git and version control, which is a valuable skill in itself.

Make sure that all the projects you upload are well-documented so that anyone can understand them without needing extra context. This includes writing a clear and detailed README, where you explain the technologies used, provide screenshots of the final product, give instructions on how to run the project and show how the code follows best practices.

3. Consider an Internship

Internships are short-term work placements, often with little or no pay, that can offer valuable hands-on experience. For those starting out, internships can be a great way to gain work experience and enhance your job search. Depending on the company, some internships are paid, while others may cover expenses like transportation or meals. Even unpaid internships can be beneficial, as they integrate you into the team and allow you to work on real projects, usually for a defined period of time, such as a month or two.

A helpful tip: Some companies announce internship opportunities in internal newsletters, especially for family members of employees. This is more common in larger companies, so it’s worth keeping an eye on those avenues when looking for opportunities.

4. Contribute to Open-Source Projects

This is a great way to gain publicly demonstrable experience! Collaborating on open-source projects not only gives you hands-on experience, but also shows your ability to work within a community and indirectly on a team.

The code you write will be used by people around the world, highlighting your collaborative spirit and technical skills. Plus, it helps you expand your network and learn from more experienced developers.

How do you choose the right project to contribute to? Focus on projects that align with the type of work you are looking for. Find an open-source project that excites you, is relevant to your work goals and makes you really proud to say, “I contributed to that.” Aim for something you are passionate about and that resonates with the field you want to work in.

5. Pay Attention to Your CV

Nowadays, many companies use AI systems to screen resumes. If your CV isn’t structured in a way that AI can easily read, it might be automatically discarded, even if you’re the perfect fit for the job. So, what do I recommend?

• Highlight your key skills: Make it easy for AI (and hiring managers) to spot the technologies and tools you’re proficient in. Clearly list them in a dedicated section. Make sure to use specific keywords, like the technologies, programming languages and tools mentioned in the job descriptions.
• Add links: In the initial section where you list your role, include links to relevant profiles like your GitHub, personal blog or portfolio. This makes it easy for recruiters to see your work firsthand.
• Avoid complex formatting: Eliminate lines, columns and icons. AI systems often struggle with anything beyond simple, linear layouts.
• Include essential sections: There are key parts of your CV that should always be included—About Me, Education and Technologies—so the AI can understand the core aspects of your profile.

How Can You Optimize Your CV to Pass AI Screening?

To make your CV as AI-friendly as possible, you can use tools like ChatGPT for valuable feedback! Simply upload your CV and use a well-crafted prompt to optimize it for AI screening. Here’s an example of how you can interact with ChatGPT to assist you in this process:

“Please analyze my CV for a junior-level React frontend developer position. Focus on making it easy to read for AI systems that might be screening for specific technologies. Can you help ensure it’s properly structured, readable, and highlights the right skills for the job market?”

Important: While optimizing for AI is crucial, remember that your CV must also be 100% readable by humans. After all, the final decision is usually made by a person. Your CV needs to be clear and attractive to both AI and recruiters.

6. Keep Your LinkedIn Profile Up to Date

If you don’t have a LinkedIn profile yet, I highly recommend creating one! And if you already have one, make sure it’s always updated with your latest achievements and skills. Here are a few tips:

• Craft a precise “About” section: Write a clear, concise description of the role you’re targeting and highlight your top five tech skills. This helps recruiters quickly understand your expertise.
• Use the “Open to Work” feature: You can choose to make this visible to the public or only to recruiters. It’s a great way to signal that you’re actively seeking job opportunities.
• Showcase your certificates: Upload certificates or diplomas from completed courses to demonstrate your continued learning and officially validate your skills.
• Share your GitHub projects: Don’t forget to showcase your work! You can post about your GitHub projects or link them in your profile, giving potential employers direct access to your code and contributions.

7. Consider Starting a Blog

When I started my blog, I had already been working in the field for a while. However, I can confidently say that creating a blog is an excellent way to showcase your knowledge. In addition to technical skills, companies highly value communication skills. The ability to explain complex or technical concepts in a simple way reflects positively on your overall abilities.

You might be thinking, “I don’t have anything valuable to contribute, I’m just starting out.” But that’s not true! What you’ve learned during your studies can absolutely help others who are in the same position as you are now. Sharing your experiences and insights, no matter how small they may seem to you, can be incredibly valuable to someone else.

If you decide to start a blog, my advice is to set clear goals, be disciplined and, most importantly, stay consistent.

I’d like to share an article I wrote a while back: “Why Becoming a Blogger Helps You Grow in Your Career: My Personal Experience as a Xamarin Blogger.”

8. Join a Community

If you have the chance to join a ocmmunity, do it! Communities are amazing spaces where you can share knowledge, help others and connect with people who are on the same journey as you. Being part of a community will make you feel supported and give you a sense of belonging.

Don’t have a community in your area? Create one! This is your chance to inspire others and build something meaningful that brings people together.

9. Keep Learning and Upskilling

Keep your knowledge fresh and up to date. The tech world is constantly evolving, so don’t rely solely on that course you took a few weeks ago or that project you finished to practice. Always seek new learning opportunities—enroll in more courses, attend talks, join workshops and explore new tools and technologies. This continuous learning will help you strengthen your profile even more.

And remember, it’s not just about the technical skills. Soft skills are equally important and often overlooked. Being able to communicate clearly, collaborate effectively and build strong relationships with your team are crucial for long-term success in any job. Don’t make the mistake of neglecting them—work on improving both your technical and soft skills.

Wrapping Up

It’s been a pleasure to share my personal tips to help you make your job search more focused, organized and intentional. I truly hope you put them into practice and that they help you land that dream first job! ✨

Wishing you the best of luck in your journey—now go out there and make it happen!

See you soon!

As a developer and a businessman, I understand the value of implementing more self-service in the customer service sector. As a consumer, I know that this puts more burden on me, especially when the system isn’t fully user tested.

Let’s look at the evolving role of information technology (IT) from the customer’s perspective. I will provide some examples that illustrate the positive aspects of this transformation history as well as the increasing burden placed on customers with the digitalization of internal company processes.

The Self-Service Era

IT allows companies to empower customers through self-service. This can be fantastic and handy because it allows customers to choose the best time to seek assistance, and if information is easy to navigate, they can resolve issues without much hassle.

A few years ago, I had some health problems and went in for consultation, and ended up being admitted to the hospital.

My experience using the hospital’s self-service digital resources at that time was challenging because they were not optimized for smartphones and did not even have an app. As a result, I had to rely on the institution’s phone support, which, although did successfully resolve most of my problems, was a cumbersome process and a less-than-ideal user experience (UX).

Now, the hospital offers an app, so patients can access exam results and other key self-service features. This is an example of how the digitization of customer service has drastically improved user experience. I don’t have to call to learn about test results or when I forgot the name of a medication—I can look all that up on the app.

This is a success story of digital transformation—when it provides greater access to the user.

Mixed Results

As with much of technology, digitized and more “self-service” customer interactions often come with mixed results.

This was the case when the The Brazilian Ministry of Justice implemented an electronic procurement (e-proc) system, which allows lawyers to now conduct several work procedures online.

The introduction of the e-proc system has significantly altered attorneys’ everyday activities. This has caused controversy among those who both acknowledge the advancement and have encountered new difficulties because of its implementation.

Drs. Pedro Martha and Ana Paula Ferraz provided me with insights about their experiences, emphasizing the legal industry’s advantages and disadvantages of digitization.

According to Dr. Pedro Martha, the electronic process has made monitoring cases easier and allowed access to files from a distance, saving time and travel. Yet, it has also increased the work involved in filing petitions. With the previous setup, once the petition and any supporting documentation were turned in at the courthouse, court employees would handle the remaining tasks. Now, the attorney bears a significant portion of the workload, organizing and scanning documents and entering detailed information into the system. He notes that while he finds the process more convenient for straightforward petitions, technology has drawbacks—particularly regarding annoying “bugs.”

Dr. Martha also showed me the many steps (more than six) to perform a single action that before was just delivering a document that professionals from the courthouse processed.

Dr. Ana Paula Ferraz highlighted how e-proc has increased productivity by enabling lawyers to file petitions after regular business hours and work across several districts without traveling. She commended the system’s adaptability but drew attention to a severe problem: the e-proc’s instability, which can freeze or crash at crucial times and result in significant stress. She also cautioned attorneys that losing their work due to a shaky internet connection could be exasperating because there’s never instant help when something goes wrong.

Both agree that e-proc modernizes the court system but recognize several ongoing challenges. Dr. Martha pointed out the increase in bureaucracy, while Dr. Ferraz highlighted the system’s unreliability. Both acknowledge that technology has made progress but believe further improvements are necessary to keep the attorneys’ electronic process secure and efficient.

This example shows the importance of thorough user testing with any major change, especially one that will completely change the way some people work.

The Dark Side of Self-Service

When a business or government agency transfers a service to a client, we effectively become “client collaborators” of the enterprise. We accept tasks to meet our needs in exchange for the organization’s material and non-material benefits.

Ultimately, the organization uses less internal labor to complete tasks that generally fall within its purview, boosting operational profits because fewer workers are needed. This can be a good thing for their bottom lines, but it can be a burden for the user and put the brand’s reputation at risk.

During a self-service demo, the presenter at a company I consulted for went over every step of the self-service process. There was no need for human interaction in that user journey because the process was entirely automated. He concluded his presentation satisfactorily, stating, “… and now we don’t need people anymore.”

Most businesses want self-service with lower costs, and this is normal. However, self-service can only satisfy some customer needs, and occasionally there are highly particular circumstances where a human being is necessary to comprehend and address the problem. This still holds true for many industries, including pharmacies, airlines and telecommunications. Fortunately, some industries may never fully adopt 100% digital self-service.

A customer’s experience after using a product or service should be the primary consideration in designing self-service. Customers’ remarks to friends and family regarding the caliber of your good or service, how they were handled and the result they received will all be based on this experience. Positive or negative word-of-mouth can leave a long-lasting impression on your company’s reputation.

Conclusion

While technological innovations like self-service and electronic systems like e-proc can significantly improve accessibility and efficiency, they can also present new user difficulties and obligations. The takeaway is that organizations and companies must put user experience and support first, so that technology helps and does not hurt, and reinforces customer satisfaction.

As we move forward with digital transformation, we must never forget that customer satisfaction is the ultimate barometer of success, which begs the question of the actual cost of efficiency and convenience.

How about introducing a different kind of development? I suggest “self-service-driven development,” which centers on addressing customers’ self-service needs at all software development cycle stages.

Ultimately, the success of our digital journey depends not only on the technology we use but also on our steadfast dedication to comprehending and satisfying our customers’ needs.

There is much talk nowadays about human-centric design (HCD) and what are the best techniques for implementing it. To help us achieve success, this article describes in practice all the pillars: Empathy, Definition, Ideation, Prototyping and Testing.

Let’s start by defining it:

Human-centric design is an approach that puts users’ needs and experiences at the center of the design process. It starts with empathy, where designers seek to deeply understand users, their motivations, and their challenges. Then comes the definition phase, where problems are identified and delimited. In the ideation stage, creative solutions are generated, and different approaches are explored to solve the issues. Prototyping turns these ideas into tangible models, allowing for testing and iteration. Finally, testing validates the proposed solutions, ensuring they meet users’ needs effectively.

“The challenge is to use the principles of human-centered design to produce positive results, products that enhance lives and add to our pleasure and enjoyment. The goal is to produce a great product, one that is successful, and that customers love. It can be done.”

— Don Norman, “Grand Old Man of User Experience,” https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/human-centered-design

At the beginning of 1994, I started my first internship in the technology area as a programmer in a small enterprise. I wasn’t sure what I could do from there, but it was my first step in evolving and meeting users’ real needs.

On a system I was working on, I put a duplicate menu option pointing to the same function in two different places. The client and my manager questioned me, and I explained that I understood that these instances would be used in two very different contexts. They would need to use that specific function in both cases, and it made sense for them to access it either way. I didn’t fully understand the concept behind what I was doing, just that it made sense to me to provide the users the best possible interaction.

Image generated with Leonardo.ai

My first big project as a Full Systems Analyst was the development of a large Manufacturing Resource Planning Level II (MRP II) industrial system for shop floor users, managers and accounting technicians. The system contemplated the cost of production of the three manufacturing units: morning products, metal packaging and soybean oils. I am grateful that the system I worked on served its purpose effectively and remained in use until 2015, even after my involvement ended in 1999.

The challenges of the system were many, such as integrating the different production processes, adapting them to the users on the shop floor, optimizing the processes and communication of all those involved, and orchestrating the more than 40 administration employees from production control planning, sales, production and accounting. This furthered my practical understanding of how to make one system useful to a variety of user paths and easy to be done as making a single click.

In 1996, at Menphis – Sistemas Inteligentes (Intelligent Systems), started in 1997 to develop Advocati.NET. At the time, it was only for Microsoft Windows. (Since then it has been developed across platforms and it’s still in use today.)

The central point of this system was to serve the legal public, lawyers, attorneys, secretaries and law trainees with a simple system that did not require computer knowledge or experience to start using it—basically, without the need for training.

Curiosity: The basis of Brazilian Law is Roman Law, unlike in the USA.

Going back to the beginning of my journey, Advocati.NET, which has been available to the public since 2011, a judicial and extrajudicial process management system with CRM, was designed with a clear path on every screen. Users could navigate the system without searching dropdown menus, and instead use links, buttons and tabs directly visible from the user’s context.

For its creation, we used the shadowing technique, in which a technology professional accompanied a user in their daily work to better understand their real needs, how the data flow worked, and the Brazilian Judiciary itself.

Its screens were all interconnected with multiple optional flows that the client could use in practice. Each law firm or legal department used the system in its own way, as there was a minimum of mandatory fields, and each team could customize the system for ideal use. It is the most open system in terms of management, as it has no obligations of fixed routines or pre-existing registrations. For example, if an end user is not previously registered, you can start an out-of-court procedure and register clients, opponents and lawyers on the same screen.

One of the challenges was to understand the organization of the Judiciary. The system was also practically developed with the intervention of lawyers from large law firms in Porto Alegre/RS to provide technical support.

Menphis was one of the pioneers in developing legal systems in Brazil.

How Does Human-Centric Design Fit into All of This?

Even before I was formally introduced to the concept of human-centric design, I was intuitively implementing its principles in my work, striving to create user-friendly and intuitive systems that were self-explanatory. I was thinking about minor details of how the user would behave in front of the system, how they would look for suitable options for their jobs or how they would look for information. I took into consideration the needs of users over the age of 40 who may have difficulty reading small text. To address this, I implemented a feature that automatically increases the font size for improved readability, and today, I need it.

The point I’m making is that at the beginning of the development of technology, the first of the PC era, there was only one thought: information technology came to help us, to give us less tedious work, to support us and to make our lives easier.

But what happened in practice with the popularization of the internet, the boom of dotcom companies in the 2000s, and Web 2.0 was that technology often became a headache in ordinary people’s lives instead of helping them.

I’ll give you a practical and real example from my experience:

In the grids I develop, I add numbers at the beginning of the rows in the first column, even though there is a column with the ID, to identify its order of presentation, like Microsoft Excel. Why is that? Because when the user is looking for something or working on a grid, this is how he can orient himself to know whether that record has already been processed, how many there are and at what point he stopped, among other countless possibilities such as referring to the row in a message: “On line X such and such a thing appears.” It makes a difference. I developed a support system where the UI design had not added this data, and it was almost impossible to visibly identify the records during pagination since the data was very similar, so I made a model to demonstrate the number of lines. I explained the need for a reference, spatial type, for the user and that it would help them find their way around, and it was terrific in practice.

Another feature included in Advocati.NET is a Google-like search, which queries any data from the database, even using memo string columns and searching protocol numbers with or without slashes, dots and other special characters.

Today, many websites and online services have a single route to access a specific service when it would be much more practical for the user to be able access the functions needed in their individual context, whatever that may be. It may cause stress for a user if she must memorize where to find the path and sequence of each option, and then, in a new version, things change places.

The first concern should be the user’s needs and agility (much more than trying to control user flow).

Recently while online shopping, I encountered a delivery on a pet store app that would take about seven days to arrive. However, I understood that some of the newly added items in my cart were the reason—maybe they were missing from the company’s headquarters. So, I removed item by item from my cart, tested it, and figured out that it was an item with stock in another location. When I removed that item, the delivery timeline was moved to the same day.

Something similar occurred in another situation in a pharmacy appThis time, it only indicated that I could not pick up the item on-site after I paid. Seeing this significant flag only at the time of payment confirmation is a severe flaw in my opinion. I should have been informed in advance if the item could not be delivered as expected.

In a pizzeria app for an international company, it was impractical to order on mobile. It was only possible to purchase through the website. I contacted a representative through the website and informed them of the flawed points, such as screen alignments, misaligned buttons, missing information and difficulty entering the card data and finalizing the order. Luckily, they released an update later that made it easy to use.

With these examples, I aim to empower professionals working on a project, from its initial idea to development, support, marketing and stakeholders, to put themselves in the customers’ shoes and simulate the user experience. This approach will help make sure that the product meets customers’ needs and expectations effectively.

Whenever I develop a new software, system or application, I try to empty my mind as much as possible and instruct myself only by what the screen shows, guiding me through the information, forgetting what each option does, and putting myself in the user’s shoes. It’s not easy, but I remember the beginning of my professional life when I had not yet had the experience of buying a car, a house or even paying an electricity bill. I lacked life experience. Today, it is easy to put myself in the user’s shoes and empathize with their needs.

Conclusion

The continuous cycle of empathy, definition, ideation, prototyping and testing is critical to creating genuinely people-centric products and services. If I apply the understanding I have now of human-centric design, I can see how its pillars have shown up throughout my career (and user) trajectory as a software creator and developer:

Empathy: Since beginning my career at Menphis, I have prioritized understanding the needs and context of users. I have gained valuable insights into their experiences through direct observation and collecting feedback.

Definition: I addressed the challenges related to the lack of agility and user satisfaction on many websites and online services. I’ve worked to offer more flexible and intuitive paths that meet the functions they need.

Ideation: I had the opportunity to propose creative solutions that enhanced the user experience, such as including a duplicate menu for more straightforward navigation, numbering the rows of tables for better organization, adjusting the font size to accommodate users of different ages, and integrating different screens of the system for a more seamless experience.

Prototyping: I had the opportunity to develop prototypes of systems such as MRP II and Advocati.NET, where I demonstrated significant improvements, including implementing numbered grids that enhanced visualization and ease of use.

Testing: I conducted tests on the developed products, putting myself in the shoes of a typical user and following the information presented on the screen to test an authentic and practical user experience.

The success of a software, app or online service should be measured by how satisfied the users are when using the product.

Of course, all this can be done and still bring financial results and success to everyone!

Even the best UI/UX designers will struggle to create designs that work in real life if there’s no bridge connecting design and development. Learn more about how the unique combination of the Telerik and Kendo UI component libraries and UI customization tools simplify design implementation.

We’ve always been interested in developer feedback, but this year, we’ve been trying a little something new at conferences with the Progress booth—we’ve been talking to developers about their experience with the design-to-dev handoff.

With a jumbo pack of sticky notes, a whiteboard and a dream, our goal was to capture three different aspects of the design to development workflow: what tools people were using, what they liked about their process and what they wished was different.

The response was incredible! Hundreds of developers shared their opinions and experiences with us. We commiserated over common pain points, celebrated wins and brainstormed what an ideal dev/design workflow could look like.

As you might imagine, developers and designers directly working together was an often-recurring topic across these thousands of sticky notes—it’s almost impossible to talk about the handoff without talking about cross-team collaboration. So let’s take a look at the main things developers wish designers knew when it comes to building websites and applications.

1. Developers Want to Be Involved in the Design Process

The developers we spoke with expressed a strong desire to be included in all phases of the project creation process. There were a great many responses related to cross-team collaboration and developer involvement—even (and especially) in work that isn’t traditionally considered development work.

Developers are eager to participate earlier in the process and work together during the planning and design phases. They want to be able to help catch potential issues early and provide deep technical knowledge that can help shape the product or feature set long before any code is written.

That might look like being included in scope definition calls, UX brainstorming, or other product planning meetings. In a wide variety of ways and across all different points in the process, devs want to be (as they said in the sticky notes) “involved,” “included” and “collaborating.”

If you’re a developer looking to get more involved in the design process, check out our free ebook Foundations of Design for Developers.

2. Developers Want to Share ‘the Same Language’ with Designers

That first wish for developers to be more involved did come with a request: that the people they collaborate with also invest the time to understand technical requirements and “speak the same language.”

Many responses mentioned the value of non-developers who understood the basics of the development process, as well as the challenges of designs and feature requests that were created without understanding the underlying technical requirements. For those developers already lucky enough to be working with designers, there were several mentions of wishing that those designers understood the development and implementation process more deeply—especially relating to the availability and limitations of components in a component library (when one is being used).

3. Developers Want to Reduce Mid-project Changes as Much as Possible

Lots of teams struggle to define project requirements accurately. There were tons of responses related to the need for clearly defined requirements at the beginning of the project (this included both sticky notes that mentioned liking clearly defined requirements and disliking poorly defined requirements).

But it’s not just the kickoff phase of the project that’s challenging. It won’t surprise anyone to hear that scope creep came up quite a bit in the “dislike” category. In fact, several responses specifically mention the difficulties of scope/requirements changing mid-project. Whether those changes come from the product team, the design team, the client or the developers themselves, they inevitably cause significant slowdown and frustration for everyone involved.

4. Developers Value Designers and Want to Have More Designers on Their Teams

Many developers are working on under-resourced teams and (rather than focusing on software or other tooling) are wishing primarily for more designers—or any designers at all! Several sticky notes specifically mentioned hoping for some kind of design specialist to be hired (those wished-for roles included UI designers, as well as UX designers and researchers).

What Does This All Mean?

In our opinion, that involvement and cooperation between the teams is what’s really going to move the needle, more than any hot new library or fancy new process. The end product can truly shine when there’s a shared space for designers and developers to create together. That also means that both parties have put in the work to learn and respect the other’s expertise, process and workflow.

Building a culture of respect and shared responsibility won’t happen overnight—especially if the design and development departments at a company have historically been isolated. It takes a lot to change the status quo from throwing a design file over a metaphorical wall and hoping for the best, to true synchronicity and collaboration at all stages of the process.

How Can I Be Involved?

One of the best ways we can start to shift that is by learning more and gaining a more thorough understanding of what all parties are looking for. By identifying those communication gaps, knowledge gaps and expectation gaps, we can begin to bridge them together.

Progress ran a State of Designer-Developer Collaboration 2024 Survey aimed at shedding light on the design handoff process, and the role design systems play in addressing the inherent challenges. Thanks to our readers for all your input! Download the survey results at the previous link, or check out some highlights in this blog post: Developers Are from Saturn, Designers from Neptune: Survey Results.

Working overtime (or losing sleep over how much you have to do but haven’t done) can be detrimental to your health and productivity. But what else can you do when you’re left with a stack of projects and tasks that keep piling up day after day?

Before you go adding more hours or days to your schedule, reevaluate the way you manage your time. Even if you feel like you’re doing as much work as you can with the time you have, these strategies can help you find and repair weaknesses in your strategy.

In this post, we’ll explore five time management strategies and various tools that can make things easier for you.

Best Time Management Strategies and Apps

Everyone works differently. To find the time management strategy and toolset that works best for you, consider the following:

1. Use a Task List

While you may know your process by heart and have a small enough stack of projects to work on, it’s easy for tasks to fall through the cracks without a list you can reference. Also, without visibility into what you’re working on, it can be hard to pivot when something unexpected comes up.

For instance, let’s say a client owes you content for a website or app you’re building. They’re late in delivering it, so you need to put that job on hold and move to another. Having a list of tasks at the ready will make it easier to pick up and go on the next project.

Now, there are different ways to create a task list. You could use pen and paper to jot down everything you’re working on. For a simple set of tasks for a single client, that might be OK.

However, task lists can also be a useful way to visualize how much you have to do. When you need to shuffle tasks around or take on something new, it can be difficult to do that if you can’t see how much time you have available on a given day or week.

One way to do this is by using Google Calendar to keep track of your tasks.

This is what it looks like when I build out my schedule using Tasks. Unlike the Calendar, I can’t set task/event durations. But I can still add time markers at the start of each task so I know how long each takes to complete.

If you don’t want to use your calendar app, you can use a task management tool to track your tasks. Asana is a good option for web designers as it gives you flexibility in how you view and manage your workload.

For example, you can choose from one of the following views:

• Task list
• Kanban board
• Timeline (this requires an upgrade)
• Calendar
• Workflow (this requires an upgrade)

It really doesn’t matter which system you use so long as it makes your life easier.

Bottom line: Having a task list that helps you visualize your tasks and makes it easy to move them around will help immensely with the management of your workload. If something gets canceled, an asset isn’t delivered on time or someone wants you to take on an additional task, a visual task list and keeper of time will allow you to do that with ease.

2. Conduct a Time Audit

The most effective way to use a task list is to include time estimates or limits for each task. That way, it’s not just a stack of tasks that you have to work through. It’s a schedule that you can manage.

There are a number of reasons why it’s beneficial to know how long your tasks take. For starters, you’ll be able to create more accurate timelines for projects. That means hitting milestones and completing projects on time, which your clients and/or employer will love.

Also, you won’t have to work late or miss deadlines because you have too much on your plate. And if a task does happen to take longer than expected, having insight into how long other tasks take and when you have some wiggle room in your schedule will help keep things on track.

But in order to schedule your tasks, you need realistic estimates of how long they take. While you might have an idea of how long you spend on every task, a time audit is the only way to know for sure.

There are a couple of tools you can use to conduct a time audit.

The first is with a regular old timer. You could use the one on your phone or you can use a free app like Toggl Track.

A timer app is the most accurate way to track the time you spend on tasks. However, you’ll have to be mindful when using it. If you don’t remember to hit the Start or Stop buttons, you could end up with inaccurate data.

The other drawback to using a timer app is that it doesn’t capture other data—like how much time you spend reading and responding to emails or in Zoom meetings. That’s why it’s a good idea to pair your timer with an automated time tracker like RescueTime.

This app tracks what you’re doing on your computer at all times. For example, an eight-hour workday might provide you with a breakdown like this:

• 1 hr 10 min in Gmail
• 3 hr 52 min in Figma
• 1 hr 51 min in Sitefinity
• 46 min in Instagram
• 34 min in Slack

It will also make it easier to visualize what percentage of your time goes to work activities vs. admin and non-work stuff. For example, you’ll see visual breakdowns similar to this pie chart:

Unlike Toggl where you enter the specific task and project name into the timer, RescueTime tells you which programs you worked in.

So it’s great for identifying how much of your day is spent on administrative tasks like chatting with coworkers in Slack, checking emails or on Zoom calls. It can also tell you how much time you’re giving up to distractions like Instagram, TikTok, and your favorite blog or news site.

You might find that distractions are eating up too much of your time. The same with admin work. While you can’t ignore essential admin tasks, you can shift them around to a time that’s more convenient for you.

This is why you should have both tools at your disposal when auditing your time. Toggl will show you how much time to schedule for whatever you’re working on. RescueTime will help you figure out when to slot in the rest while cutting back on distractions.

3. Try Out Time Blocking

There are different ways to work in time blocks.

For example, the Pomodoro technique breaks the workday up into very short sprints and breaks. Typically, a block looks like this:

• Work for 20-30 minutes.
• Break for 5 minutes.
• Work for 20-30 minutes.
• Break for 5 minutes.
• Work for 20-30 minutes.
• Break for 5 minutes.
• Work for 20-30 minutes.
• Break for 30 minutes.

This technique gives your eyes a chance to rest. For some people, it also makes the workday easier to get through as you’re not trying to power through eight-plus hours.

There are lots of Pomodoro timers out there. The one I use is called Tomato Timers.

You might not like the idea of taking such frequent breaks, especially if you’re working on a complex task. In that case, you can schedule longer 60- to 90-minute blocks and then break for a short period.

Another way to block your time is with task batching. This is a less structured approach to time blocking, but it can be more effective for some people.

For example, I primarily work as a writer. I also do consultations and tutoring. Each writing task generally takes five hours or more to complete. To have a consultation or tutoring session on that day would disrupt my flow. So I batch them all together on the same day.

You might find it valuable to do the same. For instance, if you do ongoing website or app maintenance for clients, you might schedule all those tasks on the same day instead of trying to fit them in among your creative design work or more intensive sprints.

4. Work During Most Productive Hours

If you work for an employer, you might not have much say over when your start and end times are or which days of the week you work. But if you do have control over your schedule, then consider shifting your schedule so it aligns with your most productive hours.

Ideally, you should work on tasks that match your energy levels.

For instance, let’s say you have some reports to generate. You have a tool that helps you create them, so it’s not going to take a ton of brain power. Rather than schedule this task during your peak productivity hours, push it to a time of day when you’re feeling more sluggish.

Once you’ve finished auditing your time with Toggl and RescueTime, you should have a good idea of the average time every task takes you to complete. You can use these same tools to figure out your energy levels.

Compare times tracked in Toggl against your estimates. Look for patterns where you finish the same tasks in a shorter amount of time to identify your peak productivity hours. Do the same for when those same tasks take longer.

Now, you can use RescueTime to measure a number of things.

For starters, take a look at each day’s start and end times. Are they always the same? If not, are there certain start or end times that suggest you were more productive on those days?

Also, look closely at your breaks. Are there certain breaks that you have a hard time coming back from (like the post-lunch slump)?

Next, examine when you’re most likely to get distracted. Are there certain times of day when you tend to open up social media or do online (window) shopping more than others?

Figuring out when your energy peaks and valleys may take some time. Give it at least a couple of weeks to find meaningful patterns. Once you start to notice them, schedule your tasks accordingly.

Do more difficult or urgent tasks during your peak energy times (you might have more than one of them). Schedule more passive or mundane tasks during low energy periods. And then place everything else in between.

5. Organize Your Tasks

I touched on this briefly when I talked about task batching as a time-blocking method. There are other ways to organize and order your tasks, too.

There are two methods, in particular, that might work well for you.

One is called the Big Rocks method.

Imagine you have a big empty jar. You also have a pile of big rocks, pebbles and sand that you’ve been asked to fill the jar with.

If you add the sand first, you probably won’t have enough room for the rocks with what space remains at the top.

If you add the pebbles first, you might have better luck. But you’ll still likely have gaps that need filling. Sand can certainly do that, but that means some of the big rocks will have to be left out of the jar.

To make the most of the space, you need to start with the big rocks. Fill in gaps with pebbles when possible. Then let the sand slide through the crevices and fill the rest of the jar.

This is a metaphor for how the Big Rocks method works.

You have a bit of leeway in terms of what you classify as big rocks. They could be the most time-consuming, important or urgent tasks. The pebbles would then represent tasks of medium importance/urgency/time. And sand would stand for micro tasks that aren’t urgent or won’t take much of your time to complete.

While you might like tackling the “sand” tasks because they’re easier to check off your list, they’re not going to get you far in accomplishing your goals.

So as you plot out your day, your big rocks should be prioritized. And if you want to reduce the temptation to work on pebbles or sand instead, schedule the big rocks during your peak productivity hours. Higher levels of energy will give you a much-needed boost to tackle what’s most important or urgent.

That brings me to the other task organization method. This one is called the Eisenhower Matrix.

This strategy starts with a quadrant.

Take each of your tasks and add them to the quadrant based on their urgency and importance.

In the top-left corner is the set of tasks you need to DO first. They are urgent and important.

In the top-right corner is the set of tasks you need to SCHEDULE next. They are not urgent, but they’re still important.

In the bottom-left corner is the set of tasks you need to DELEGATE. They are urgent, but not important. If you don’t have any coworkers, contractors or employees, then you’ll be responsible for tackling them as soon as you’ve finished all your important work.

In the bottom-right corner is the set of tasks you need to IGNORE. They are neither urgent nor important. They might be the easiest to do, but, again, the time you spend on them will keep you from making progress as you chip away at your workload.

Wrapping Up

If you constantly feel like you’re drowning at work, it’s worth taking a look at how you manage your time. Small distractions could be chewing away at your availability or you might be working when your focus and energy are at its lowest.

Evaluate your time and how you choose to spend it. There are different tools that will allow you to find weak spots in your current time management strategy. Then try out some alternative strategies. We all work differently and our bodies are wired differently. You might have been using a time management strategy that worked for other people you know, but just wasn’t built for the way you’re wired.