Hi everyone, welcome to our first weekly update of 2022!

In light of the new year, there's no better time than right now to talk about building good habits as a developer. So here we go, 5 habits we should strive for as developers:

1) Time Management: it takes experience to estimate the length of projects and the time necessary to learn new skills. Working on your time management skills will allow you to become much better at that! I have a video series on my channel (new video on this topic coming up soon) and have also written a few articles on this topic. They are listed at the bottom of this email if you want to check them out.
2) Working on the quality of your code: learn more about clean code practices and how to write flexible code. If you are looking for resources on this, I recommend reading the book, "The Missing Readme". It talks about a lot of good practices that are sometimes glossed over when you are learning or in the early stages of your career.
3) Challenging ourselves: the best professionals are the ones who never stop learning. By adding new challenges to the projects you build, you will keep growing as a developer. I am challenging myself to become a good software architect this year. I will let you know how it goes :)
4) Building a healthy routine: the secret behind successful people is ultimately related to their lifestyle. Get enough sleep, enjoy the outdoors, eat well, and you will become better at what you do! I highly recommend you read the book "Deep Work" if you have not already. This book completely changed my perspective on getting things done while still finding balance and being able to relax.
5) Sharing our journey: this is great to follow our personal progress throughout the year, but also inspire and teach our developers out there going through similar challenges. If you have not started a blog yet (or have any other way to share your content), I highly recommend checking out Hashnode (https://hashnode.com/). It is a free platform with thousands of other developers and a beautiful, clean interface. The best part is that you can get set up in less than two minutes and start writing! Don't forget to share the link to your blog with me :)

I hope you have all had a great start to this new year, and I would love to know some of the skills you're looking forward to learning this year :) Let me know it on our Discord chat!

Have a good week,
-Gwen

Videos & Articles on productivity as software devs:

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gX7e8ylOXwE&list=PLFBirL3MAv280DyyQAGgae-HYoHWgmLJ0
- https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/staying-focused-distraction-free-programming-943f10335c56/
- https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/productivity/