❌ "The thing doesn't work sometimes."

✅ "The user authentication API returns a 500 error 
when the password contains special characters. 
Steps to reproduce:
1. Navigate to /login
2. Enter valid email
3. Enter password with @ symbol
4. Click submit
Expected: Successful login
Actual: 500 Internal Server Error"

Subject: [Action Required] Database Migration - Friday 3PM

Hi team,

We're migrating the user database this Friday at 3PM PST.

Action Required:
- Stop all deployments after 2PM
- Monitor #incidents channel during migration
- Test your features post-migration

Timeline:
- 2:00 PM - Deployment freeze
- 3:00 PM - Migration begins
- 3:30 PM - Estimated completion
- 4:00 PM - Deployments resume

Questions? Reply or ping me on Slack.

Thanks,
John

// ❌ Unhelpful comment
// This function processes data
function processData(data) {
  // ...
}

// ✅ Helpful comment
/**
 * Validates and transforms user input for storage
 * 
 * Removes HTML tags to prevent XSS attacks and normalizes
 * whitespace. Throws ValidationError if input exceeds 1000 chars.
 * 
 * @throws {ValidationError} If input is invalid or too long
 */
function processData(data: string): string {
  // ...
}

Yesterday:
- Completed user authentication feature
- Fixed bug in payment processing

Today:
- Working on OAuth integration
- Code review for Sarah's PR

Blockers:
- Waiting for API key from external team

Explain to different audiences:

For Engineers:
"We're implementing a Redis cache layer with an LRU 
eviction policy to reduce database load."

For Product Managers:
"We're adding a caching system that will make the app 
faster and reduce server costs."

For Executives:
"This optimization will improve user experience and 
reduce infrastructure costs by 30%."

❌ "This is wrong."
❌ "Why would you do it this way?"
❌ "This code is terrible."

✅ "This will throw an error if the array is empty. 
Consider adding: if (!items.length) return []"

✅ "I see you're using a for loop here. Have you 
considered Array.map()? It's more idiomatic and 
easier to read."

✅ "Great solution! One small thing: we can simplify 
this using our existing utility function."

✅ "Good catch! I'll fix that."
✅ "That's a great point. I'll update it."
✅ "I see what you mean. I was thinking X, but Y makes more sense."

❌ "That's how it's supposed to work."
❌ "This is fine as is."
❌ "Whatever, I'll change it."

❌ "It doesn't work."

✅ "The login API returns a 401 error when I use 
the production credentials in the staging environment. 
It works in development. Could this be a CORS issue?"

Components:
- Specific: What exactly is broken?
- Measurable: What's the error/behavior?
- Actionable: What have you tried?
- Relevant: What's the context?
- Time-bound: When did this start?

1. Reproduce the issue
2. Isolate the problem
3. Form hypothesis
4. Test hypothesis
5. Fix and verify

Example:
Problem: Users can't log in

1. Reproduce: Confirmed login fails with test account
2. Isolate: Check logs → Database connection error
3. Hypothesis: Database credentials expired
4. Test: Check credential expiry → Expired yesterday
5. Fix: Update credentials → Login works

Urgent + Important     | Not Urgent + Important
- Production bugs      | - Technical debt
- Security issues      | - Learning
- Blocker tickets      | - Documentation

Urgent + Not Important | Not Urgent + Not Important
- Some meetings        | - Busy work
- Some emails          | - Distractions

25 min work → 5 min break → Repeat 4x → 15-30 min long break

9:00-11:00   Deep work (coding)
11:00-12:00  Meetings
12:00-1:00   Lunch
1:00-2:00    Code review
2:00-4:00    Deep work (coding)
4:00-5:00    Communication (email, slack)

Instead of:
"Your code is buggy."

Try:
"I found an issue. Let's debug it together."

Instead of:
"This requirement doesn't make sense."

Try:
"Can you help me understand the use case for this?"

1. Hook (30 seconds)
   "Last month, our checkout page had a 45% abandonment rate."

2. Problem (2 minutes)
   "We discovered three major friction points..."

3. Solution (5 minutes)
   "Here's what we built..."

4. Results (2 minutes)
   "Abandonment dropped to 28%..."

5. Takeaways (1 minute)
   "Three lessons learned..."

Conflict: Disagreement on technical approach

❌ Bad:
"My way is better. Let's just do it."

✅ Good:
"I see your point about performance. I'm concerned 
about maintainability. Can we explore a middle ground? 
What if we optimize the critical path and keep the 
simpler approach for less-used features?"

❌ "Get better at React"

✅ "Complete the Advanced React course and build 
a side project using hooks, context, and suspense 
by end of Q1"

Specific: Advanced React concepts
Measurable: Course + project
Achievable: 3 months
Relevant: Career growth
Time-bound: End of Q1

Framework: SBI (Situation, Behavior, Impact)

"In yesterday's meeting (Situation), 
when you interrupted Sarah multiple times (Behavior), 
it made her feel unheard and slowed down the discussion (Impact). 
Could we try letting people finish their thoughts?"

✅ "Thank you for the feedback. Can you give me 
specific examples so I can improve?"

❌ "That's not true. You're wrong about me."