Soft Skills by John Sonmez

Intro

I finished reading a book. I read the first version of the book before, and I learned a lot. So that, I didn’t hesitate to buy the second one. In the first version of the book, I found it was beneficial for developing my career, and it showed me a lot of different views about wealth.

The first time I found him was when I searched about a mentorship. After reading his several blog posts, I agreed with his idea and registered on his mailing list. (By the way, I am surprised a lot by his marketing ability every time.) Thanks to the mailing list, I found that he published the second version of the soft skills book.

In this post, I want to share some interesting points in the book. I should say I can pick up more topics, but at the same time, I don’t want to make a long scroll post. Here in this post, I introduce three of them.

Your job is not a job, but business

Start to think of yourself as a business.

The idea makes me free from the company. As a programmer, I try to keep thinking that I’m not an employee, but I’m in the software industry. That’s what I feel and that’s the way how I see the world. I’m not a freelancer though. I feel like that and I try not to be an employee.

Honestly, it’s not always easy for me to keep the point since I can recognize lack of positions or roles in the company. And, I peform those things.

Besides the reality, I agree with the statement because it makes me feel a responsibility. After I agree with that statement, I can say that developing my skill is an important factor in my business.

Life is a series of interpretation

Situations don't present themselves as "good" or "bad"

I've recently started saying "I either win or I learn"

I love that the author introduces the Stoicism philosophy in this version. I think I face countless times that I face the same statement. I can’t say I have enough experience to understand what it means. I feel I close to understand what it means. I now have a better understanding of why everything is up to mind.

In the life, all events don’t have a face. The situation doesn’t tell you; “This is a great chance”. When it happens, and what’s the result? You take the result with your interpretation; ‘Oh, this is a bad situation’ or ‘Wow, this could be a millionaire chance.’ What does it mean? All situations is up to my mind. If I find any positive thing, I can say it’s a good one. So that, I can keep joyful mindset. All up to my mind.

The statement; “I either win or I learn”, I take it as removing the “failure” ore replacing with “learn”. In fact, the failure is a chance to learn something.

Compliment leadership

You have to learn to bite your tongue and only speak words of 
encouragement if you want to inspire people to perform their 
best or you want to effect change

I know a professor who does really well in this. Fortunately, I had a change to take her class. That is my best class ever. I still keep in touch with her. She never press me, but she gave me huge compliments. I didn’t remember what she said exactly. It was about 10 years ago. Everytime I got some positive feedbacks from her. And she listened to my worries and plans. I knew she had a lot of works, but whenever I found her, she was so kind and concentrate on me. It was lucky that she was an English teacher. Thanks to her, I didn’t lose my interest in English and I could write blog in English.

Outro

While I am reading a book, I highlighted more than these three quotes. Some of them are here.

every friday send a weekly report to the manager

My point is, you don't have to take everything so 
seriously—especially the things you can't control.

Blog post, focus on quality and improve the quality everytime.

Write an article to Software Development Megazines

Task of teaching what you learned to someone else

Any action is often better than no action, 
especially if you have been stuck in an unhappy 
situation for a long time.

There's almost nothing you can do without believing 
you can do it.

Go out there and purposely put yourself in difficult 
situations that will inevitably result in some kind 
of failure

If you want to succeed, you have to learn how to swallow 
your pride and get out there and not be afraid to make a 
fool of yourself.

You can never please everyone

As you see, this book is full of wisdoms not only for programmers but for generals. I repeatedly read some chapters; the positive mindset and the Stoicism philosophy. Thank you for reading this post and if you want to read it. Here is the link.