Recently Andrew posted a response to the question "How do you become a successful developer?" This question has received many responses from the community and I am presenting my 2 cents here.

Among all wonderful suggestions I’d like to add Stay Focused. In this day and age you are being bombarded by CTPs and Betas on daily bases. There are new technologies coming out left right and centre and it becomes hard for someone to stay focused. The issue is that most of the new technological arrivals on Microsoft stack are too damn interesting to ignore. However one can loose track here and end up spending most of their time looking at bits which may be out of their core competency. You run into the danger of getting distracted and loose your edge. So I say, stay focused on your area of specialisation and master the art as if your life depends on it.

But the new CTPs are so cool

Now any developer must look at the new technology which comes out. Honestly, this is probably one of the reason we choose software development as a career path. It is the excitement of working with new cool technologies and solving problems using technology which keeps us going. But a balance is required. The way I try to stay focused and still be able to learn and play with new stuff is that I follow the Google way. Yes you can learn things everywhere and the 20/80 split in time followed by Google employees seems to be a good approach. I spend at-least 20% of my time learning new technologies, playing with beta software and keeping up-to-date with the latest trends. Being a consultant I do not get paid for that 20% so it is purely my time and I value it highly.