How can I read more books?
Make it a priority to read books. Replace some of the existing habits you have with reading books instead.
If you like to spend time reading reddit or hackernews or watching videos on youtube, replace that with reading a book. Of course, it's easier said than done. The best way I've been able to transition from those activities to reading books was to progress slowly. Don't replace reading hackernews one day by reading a book instead. Instead, simply spend 5, 10, 15 minutes reading a book, and then the remainder of the time on reading hackernews. Spend the same amount of time every day reading a book for a week. When a week has passed, increase that amount of time slightly (e.g., go from 5 minutes per day to 10 minutes per day).
As you increase the amount of time you read, you will find it easier and easier to spend time reading instead of doing other activities you might consider harmful or less valuable.
How can you tell when you've reached the top of your job and that you won't find smarter people?
When people that challenge you bring arguments which you've already considered. When the suggestions of others are stale or not intriguing. When you don't find excitement in your work. When you aren't challenged anymore. When the problems you are facing are not solved elegantly by others. When the problems you are facing have become so niche that few people on Earth may be able to discuss them or help you solve them.
Determining if you are a low performer
History / Edit / PDF / EPUB / BIB / 2 min read (~270 words)How can you tell if you are a low performer?
I always prefer to compare myself against my prior self and not against others. Thus, I would consider myself a low performer if my throughput is lower than what it has been on average in the past. This may happen for many reasons, amongst them it would be because I'm learning something new, so I'm spending a good chunk of my time on learning and less on executing. It might be because I'm trying different ideas to find the best one because I'm working on something I've never worked before.
It's generally easy for a programmer to tell whether he's been more or less productive than the prior week. It is mostly based on feelings, where you feel good when you are productive and less good when you're not making any progress or facing issues.
If you think and feel that you are performing poorly, start recording more thoroughly what you are working on. Identify when you start and finish working on a task, and when you get blocked, write down why. After a few weeks, look at what you wrote and assess what might cause you to feel that you are a low performer. Is it because you're working on a task you are not good at? Is it because of a lack of motivation on the task you've been assigned to?
With more information in hand to determine why you feel that you are a low performer, you will be able to devise a plan so that you can once again feel like a high performer.
What should be defined to make a user demo walkthrough successful?
You need to define what you want to learn from the demo walkthrough: where does the user ask questions? where does he stay stuck? what is easy/hard for him to do? what does he think about when he goes through the demo? what is/isn't working? what frustrates him? where does the user want to have more guidance?
The user doing the walkthrough should be as close as possible to the ideal user otherwise you may get feedback that is biased on their own experience. A user with too much knowledge compared to your target user will be able to do many things your target user may need help with and they may assume a lot of things because they know about them. On the other hand, a user with too little knowledge will require help in many places where the target user is expected to have knowledge, which may make the demo walkthrough slower than desired.
The walkthrough should have a clear scenario. You may only give an initial setup to the user and a desired goal and let them figure everything out by themselves. You may also go with a more directed approach, where you tell them what to do and you see if the instructions are clear enough to accomplish the steps. The first approach is interesting because it allows you to observe variability in how to solve a problem.
How can you tell when you're working on the wrong task?
You may be working on the wrong task because priorities have changed. To determine if that is the case, you should ask yourself whether completing the task provides value, either to you or your users. If the answer is no, drop the task. If the answer is yes, you should determine if it is the utmost important task at the moment. If the answer is no, then figure out which task is. If the answer is yes, then proceed.
You may be working on the wrong task because you don't have the necessary information to complete the time in an appropriate amount of time. If you find yourself spending most of your time gathering information instead of accomplishing the task that should be done with the information you need, then it may not be the right time to do the task yet. You may have to create a prior task which is to acquire the necessary knowledge to execute the original task.
If you notice that to complete your task there are pre-requisites that should have been completed, then you should work on those instead of the task with those dependencies. In some cases you may realize that you can't accomplish a task because you don't have the tooling necessary or the technology to accomplish the task is not available yet.
As I suggest in my article Given that you define a ROI on a task, when should you stop working on a task and abandon it given its cost?, you should estimate how long you expect for a task to take. At the half time, you should evaluate whether you'll be able to complete the task by the estimate's deadline. If you can't, then you should either drop the task (if you can), or look for alternative ways to get the task completed, either by asking a more experienced person or by simplifying the task.