Quotes from Chad Fowler

The easiest way to never get anything done is to never commit to anything.

Education requires both a teacher and a student. Many of us are too often reluctant to be a student.

With credibility comes influence.

Humility is not just something we develop so we can claim to be more spiritual. It also allows you to see your actions more clearly.

Your skills should transcend technology platform

Athletes push themselves to the limit during workouts so they can expand those limits for the real performances. They let the ugliness happen behind closed doors—not when they're actually working.

You do not win a race by trying not to loose

Always be the worst guy in every band you are in.

Take calculated risks with your career. Don't let fear consume you. And if you're not having fun, you're not going to be excellent.

Instead of feeling like you are the computer genius, descending from computer heaven to save your poor customer from purgatory, turn the tables around. If you're, for example, working in the insurance industry, think of your customer as a subject matter expert in insurance from which you have to learn in order to get your job done.

a big company makes a wonderful place to go and semiretire for a while if you're burned out. But if you're striving to be remarkable (which you are!), a big company is a hard place to get into the right groove in the same way that a bakery is a bad place to go to try to work off your love handles. The solution? Go independent!

Because we all make mistakes, we also know that everyone else makes mistakes. So, within reason, we don't judge each other on the mistakes we make. We judge each other on how we deal with those inevitable mistakes.

It seems backward, but keeping your mind focused on the present will get you further toward your goals than keeping your mind focused on the goal itself.

Studying the work of masters is an essential part of becoming amaster.

As you're reading through code, you will find things that you would have never done. You will find things you might have never even thought of. Why? What was the developer thinking? What were his or her motivations? You can even learn from bad code with this kind of critical, self-aware exploration of an existing work.

Set your sights higher. Don't think of yourself as a programmer at a specific company—after all, it's not likely that you'll be at the same place forever—but as a participating member of an industry. You are a craftsperson or an artist. You have something to share beyond the expense-reporting application you're developing for your human resources department or the bugs you've got stacked up in your company's issue-tracking system.

Sir Isaac Newton said, "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Smart guys like Isaac know that there is much to be learned from those who came before us. Be like Isaac.

I learned that no matter how cool the technology seemed to be, it was valuable only if it solved a real problem that was urgent and provided quantifiable benefits. - Vik Chadha

I don't know" is not a phrase for the insecure.

Be courageous enough to be honest.