How To Discover Your Work Passions And Hatreds

• Regularly take time to reflect on how much you enjoy your work, especially when you're earlier-in-career.
• Write down everything you do. Here are some examples of common things software engineers do:
  • Writing code
  • Reviewing code
  • Meetings
  • Working with JIRA
  • Talking with cross-functional stakeholders
  • Fixing bugs
• Split all the items into 3 buckets:
  • Things you genuinely enjoy: Tasks/behaviors you are excited to do and can lose track of time doing them.
  • Neutral: Things you can do a good amount of, but in the end, you do it for work.
  • Chores: You only do it for work, and you actively try to minimize doing these as much as possible.
• From the top bucket (enjoyment bucket), try to craft your work life around that.

Related resources about soul searching and find your own path:

• "I feel like senior engineers tend to focus on a specific area. How can I pick a specialization that's still relevant in 5-10 years?"
• [Masterclass] How To Choose A Good Company And Team As A Software Engineer