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The Key to Avoiding Procrastination If you have a task you've been putting off, dividing it into small chunks is a good idea. But the real key to overcoming procrastination is just getting started. Once you begin, you’ve built momentum and are likely to keep going, doing a little more until you’ve made good progress—and maybe even completed the job. |
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Elevate Code Quality by Integrating Testing and Development Pair programming generally involves two programmers working on a single change from start to finish. You can augment this pattern by adding a test specialist, so you can test-drive feature changes first and the tester can ask questions and guide test and code design. What you get is quality built in from the start. |
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The 5 Levels of Listening: Which Does Your Team Practice? The ways we listen—and not listen—are detailed in the Five Levels of Listening model, which goes from most distracted to most focused. Ideally, we’d all practice the fifth level: empathic listening, where we try to understand what matters to the person who is speaking, delaying our problem-solving and responsiveness. |
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The Spectrum of Negotiation: Using the Right Skills for the Context Negotiation occurs on a spectrum, and different tactics apply in different situations. For instance, you’d treat a one-time transaction differently from an ongoing client relationship you want to nurture. Have you developed effective negotiating skills? Are you applying negotiating skills appropriate for the context? |
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Recognizing and Reversing a Culture of Blame A culture of blame is one in which people are reluctant to accept responsibility for things that go wrong. Finger-pointing becomes an automatic response. It's nearly impossible for one person to reverse a culture of blame alone, but it is possible to demonstrate on a small scale what appropriate behavior looks like. |
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Do Testers Really Need to Learn How to Code? Because automation, AI, and agile have changed how we test software, the thought is that testers need to understand a certain amount of coding so that they can make themselves more well-rounded and better able to adapt within a software project. But there are other things testers can focus on before learning to code. |
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The Benefits of Thinking on Your Feet—Literally Most articles and research about avoiding prolonged sitting and doing more work while standing have focused on the physical health benefits of periodic standing, particularly if you have a desk job. But there are also mental benefits. Standing and walking improve attention, memory, and other cognitive skills, too. |
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Why Smart People Sometimes Do Dumb Things Smart people sometimes do things that are not so smart. In fact, smarter people are actually more vulnerable to thinking errors than those who are less smart, causing them to make unwise decisions. If you’re a smart person, the smartest thing you can do may be to recognize the ways in which you are not so smart. |
