Kent consumes as much information as he can about the thing that he's interested in, then he builds stuff with the things that he's consumed. The consumption process involves glancing over any related content or diving deep into a tutorial.But then you actually have to build something, and not just follow a tutorial, but actually build a thing that you made up in your mind. Don't follow a tutorial. Then, go off and teach the things that you learned through blogging, meetups, podcasts, conference talks, etc.
--------
41:55
Effective Communication Through Content Creation
People learn in different ways. By recording your content in multiple mediums you are enabling a larger portion of your audience to learn more effectively.But, creating content isn't just for brand-building, it is also an effective way to solidify knowledge for yourself. If you are asking yourself at what skill level should you start creating content then you should remember that creating content is for anyone who wants to learn and not forget stuff.
--------
44:24
Transitioning From Employee To Independent
Kent attributes a lot of his success in becoming independent to building his personal brand. He double dipped with the value he produced while employed by creating content to share publicly. Kent also made sure to interact with people and answer questions on twitter. The key is not to try to get as many followers as possible, but instead to try to have an audience who is committed to you and your message. You can't do this by trying to force engagement with viral tweets, you have to produce real value and share it with people.
--------
44:28
Techniques For Writing Maintainable Code
The only thing that matters in software is the experience of the user. And, even though the user will never see your code, the quality of it actually affects them indirectly. The reason that the user cares about how you write your code is that it affects how long it takes to get new features out the door. Something that takes three weeks might only take a few days if the code was written in a more maintainable way and optimized for changes.There are many patterns that we can use to make our code more maintainable, but the key is to know when to use them. If patterns are inappropriately used, it can lead to the code actually becoming harder to make changes to. For example, sometimes it's better to have a small amount of duplication than it is to create a hasty abstraction.
--------
48:45
Increasing The Impact Of Your Value
Kent amplified the impact of his work by making stuff he'd do on the job public. Instead of sending an email to engineers he would write a blog post and link them to it. He made a closed-source project open-source so he could work on open-source on the clock. And, he gave his workshops to PayPal employees so he could improve his workshops on the clock. There are stages to the impact of value. You have some value in your head. Somebody asks you a question, and you communicate it to them. You've created some value. The impact of that value that was in your head has increased to that one person. But let's say that instead of just communicating that value to one person, you schedule a meeting. Now that impact has been spread across these ten people in the meeting. But, what if you record that meeting? Then that value can be distributed across multiple teams. Now let's say instead of communicating the value directly, you write up a blog post. That value can now be distributed everywhere.Automation is another thing you can do to increase the impact of your value. Even if you don't save yourself any time by automating, you are still increasing your productivity since you aren't making as many context switches.
France