Stage 6 of 8 · 7 lessons · ~2 weeks

Productivity and learning on the job

Manage your time and focus, get unstuck methodically, use AI assistants within your company's rules and learn the business as well as the code.

Start: Knowing what matters most this week

Lessons· one lesson for each topic, in this order

Do this

Write a short plan every Monday and check it on Friday against what you did.
Block two focus periods a week in your calendar and set chat to do not disturb during them.
Follow a written routine when stuck before asking for help.
Find your company's AI tool policy and note which tools and data are allowed.
Read, run and test every line an assistant suggests before you commit it.
Keep a glossary of business terms and ask a product or support colleague to explain a customer's day.
Choose one or two skills to practise for a few hours a week and review the plan monthly.

Start with· follow one of these

BookFree
Software Engineering at Google
Titus Winters, Tom Manshreck and Hyrum Wright · Intermediate
Free online: the chapters on knowledge sharing and testing show how strong teams learn and work
BookPaid
The Pragmatic Programmer
Hunt and Thomas · Intermediate · About $45
Habits for learning, debugging and owning your work that last a whole career

Practise

Toggl Track
Track two ordinary weeks to see where your time really goes before changing anything

Keep handy

Claude Code Documentation
How an AI coding tool handles your code and permissions, so you can check it against your company's rules

Also worth your time

Get better at programming by learning how things work (opens in a new tab)Read
Why learning the systems under your daily work pays off faster than chasing new tools

Before moving on: A weekly plan template you have used for a month, two protected focus blocks in your calendar, a written note of your company's AI tool rules, a domain glossary with at least 15 terms and a one-page learning plan.

Tauseef's advice

Use AI assistants, but only the ones your company allows and only on code you then understand line by line. I have seen juniors lose trust in a week by pasting code they could not explain. The domain matters too: the engineer who knows why a feature exists gets the interesting work.