Eight traits to work on to be the best engineer you can be
That question was "what do I work on if I want to become the best software engineer that I can be?"
![Eight traits to work on to be the best engineer you can be](/content/images/2021/02/meditation-background-1.jpg)
I came across this TED talk presented by Richard St. John almost fourteen years ago and thought it was interesting. A fairly thorough guide on becoming successful and famous. I did not have the desire to become super famous or rich and thought the concepts he presented would only be applicable towards that end so I did not think to implement his advise. Fourteen years later, some years working as a software engineer, a question pops up in my mind. That question was "what do I work on if I want to become the best software engineer that I can be?" That seems straight forward at first because you can google search the latest tech trends/tricks and pluck any one out of a hat and do some tutorial course or toy project with it. Does that really make someone a better engineer though? If you take some very good engineers in the past like Kent Beck or Steve Wozniak for example, is that what characterized them? I don't think so.
From that point on I was fascinated with the internal qualities of what it means to be the best you can be. I researched and looked into many self help resources that are currently popular. I was not happy with their quality of content (or lack thereof). Then I remembered that Richard St. John gave a pretty good talk and I could not find any holes or issues with what he was recommending. I bought his book, read through it, and now I aim to present some good advice tailored specifically for software engineers and how I personally am applying them.
I will be doing an 8 part series going into each trait development more in depth.
![](https://fullstackgjj.com/content/images/2021/02/8-traits-diagram.jpg)
Here is an amazon affiliate link to his book for anyone interested in reading the material. Any purchase made through that link supports this blog.