“Brain refactor” book review

Can you actually treat your brain as a piece of code? Can we actually refactor our thinking, making us better programmers? Let’s find out.

Brain refactor – what does it even mean?

The book I am reviewing today caught my attention, after I heard an interview with its author – Dagna Bieda – in the TechLeadJournal podcast. The title of the book is quite lengthy. “Brain Refactor: Optimize Your Internal Code To Thrive in Tech & Engineering and Get More Success, Fulfillment, Money, Opportunities, Impact, and Growth” isn’t that catchy, but it actually describes perfectly what the whole book is about. We have our internal software running 24/7, and the problem is, that in several areas, our software is still using IE6 with some prehistoric jQuery and Java applets (gosh, I’m old). As it’s 2024, and technology made a long leap since IE6, we start to fall behind with everything. Especially, if you substitute IE6 with your soft skills, and the demand for them as you reach more senior positions. This is what brain refactor is all about – to change the internal software you’re running, in order to make progress in your career.

So, where do I start?

Well, as usual – with observability and monitoring. However, not applied to the code and systems, but to our behavioral patterns. Without actually figuring out how we operate, where our strong and weak points are, any kind of improvement would be hard. The author sees feedback of all kinds, as a way to go. Where feedback is not just some official, 1:1 career-management process kind-of-feedback, but every situation/input you can get at the workplace. Increasing amount of stress? More and more bugs being deployed to production? Fixing long-standing bugs in the app’s code? All those things are valuable feedback, and we should learn how to accommodate and use it. It’s that simple, but definitely not easy! Dagna presents a simple matrix that we can use, in order to get through that initial phase.

All righty. What now?

Now we can dismantle obstacles that are blocking our path for career progress. While applying the tools we’ve learned about in the first chapters, the author presents how they can be used to overcome impostor syndrome, burnout, improve our self-marketing and communication with people. I think we need to pause here a little. What I find great about this book is not only the fact that it describes techniques to make a career’s development. Given the author’s personal experience with burnout/depresion/impostor syndrome – I see “Brain refactor” not only as a way to become a more productive developer/engineer. It’s more about being the better version of oneself, where work-related improvements are just accidental. It’s not written directly, but I feel like it’s our ego that gets dismantled along the way. With every read chapter, it became more and more clear to me. The less ego, the more we flourish. Not only at work. Everywhere.

Summary

“Brain refactor” is very short, you can read it in an afternoon. Should you do it? Yes, for sure. The more advanced you are in your career, the more important it is to give this book a try. I’m convinced that it will help you with uncovering at least some limits in your internal software. What is more – it will also give you the tools to refactor those limits (aka. bugs, not features). Good luck!