Lessons for Bringing Forth Self-Confidence as a Developer

When you begin your journey as a developer, you’re not really concerned about the business aspects of things, or any aspects that concern the money side of things, only once you begin to pull in bigger clients with bigger demands do you realize that you’re a tiny business within yourself.

Though it’s not just the business side that we need our self-confidence for, knowing how to apply our knowledge and insights into the real world is also quite important, which is where many developers begin to realize that they’re better off on the code side of things, than they’re on expressing themselves.

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These are all small things compared to having to give a talk at a conference in front of more than a hundred of people, it puts pressure on you as a developer and also as a human being, because those people will not forget you screwing things up, and unless you do a good job – they’ll quickly forget you, or perhaps make you famous. You should be prepared for either.

Know Your Ambitions

Whatever word is most appropriate to you: goal, ambition, vision — whatever that you think is the end-goal that you’d like to achieve either out of a project, or the job that you’re currently in. It’s important that we know our ambitions before we start to throw all of our life at one single thing, without thinking about the consequences.

The problem arises when we get somewhat far in our predictions, but things start to take different routes on more frequent basis, and we just aren’t sure anymore as to what we really want, which definitely puts a dent in our own self-confidence.

Continue to Learn

Your learning process should never stop, knowing how to appreciate that which you learn is a big step in the right direction, think about all the things you’ve learned in the past and how they are now helping you to create a better life for yourself — apply that understanding to things you’ve yet to learn, and just take it one step at a time; even if it seems difficult. Learning should be a fun process for everyone.

Take Bold Risks

When was the last time you took a really big, bold risk? And if recently, what did you learn from that experience? Did you succeed, or did you think that you failed? In any case, you should have taken away some important lessons as to how risks work, and sometimes it’s good to just throw yourself out there to see what happens.

By not agreeing to bold risks, you’re blocking yourself from new experiences, perhaps just the experiences you need to move forward with your developer career, or at least as someone who is more confident within his own abilities.

Give Yourself Credit

Built something new, something that you’ve never done before? Great, now go and take some time off and give yourself credit for it. You’re not meant to work as a machine all the time, you’ll see that if you reward yourself for doing great things — your self-confidence will increase immensely, you’ll have learned how to reward yourself for having done a great job. So many developers think it’s all about work, work and work. It’s not. Try it.

Ignore Doubt, Work With It

Doubt is when we know that we could get from A to B, but we still question our motives and the influence that this might have on ourselves and those arounds. Leave all that behind and just do what you wish to accomplish, the best way to start a new project is to lay out a foundation for it — know all the important steps you need to take before you can move into a phase where you feel comfortable.

Cultivating Self-Confidence for Developers

Regardless of what you think are the necessary steps for you to take to help yourself increase your self-confidence, these tips that we’ve looked at in this post are very effective, and possibly the most effective ones that you can put to use straight away.

I shouldn’t be the one telling you that you deserve more than you think you do, it’s all about going and getting that which is truly yours, and if it doesn’t feel like the right time to improve your confidence; then screw it, just keep working on the stuff that works for you.