Be an archeologist In the 1989 blockbuster film, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Archeological Professor Henry Jones teaches: “Archeology is the search for fact not truth. If it’s truth you’re interested in, Dr. Tyree’s philosophy class is right down the hall.” Archeologists seek to understand ancient civilizations by interpreting facts. Because we often use these words synonymously let’s examine a definition: Fact Something that is known based on empirical research and quantifiable measurement (objective)

Be a problem solver You automate the menial, complex, and repetitive tasks of the real world to drive efficiency via experience, algorithm, and architecture. To do so successfully you must be (and be seen as) an expert problem solver. How do you become an expert problem solver? This framework might help. Get Context Often you are given specific tasks or problems to solve with little context of why. Your first job is to understand the why.

Be a skeptic You live in a society that worships speed. Your smartphone optimizes your driving route. Your news feed pushes crash diets or quick meal ideas. You manage a myriad of deadlines at work and in your personal life. You are conditioned to live as fast and efficiently as possible. The universal obsession with speed incentivizes individuals and organizations to sell you a quick fix, a shortcut, that one weird secret.

Delegate Wisely On March 22, 2016, Azer Koculu in protest of losing a trademark dispute removed all his open source contributions including a package called left-pad from the Node Package Manager (NPM) repository. His action caused massive disruption to programmers and workflows around the world. The mere 11 lines of code were (and still are) a dependency on many popular tools and frameworks including React and Babel. It took several hours to recover, including a controversial move by the NPM corporation to re-publish and take ownership of the ‘pad-left’ package.