25 Tips for New Developers: Advice from a (Mostly) Self-Taught Software Engineer

Habits

If I can convince you to do one thing after reading this article, it would be to pick up Atomic Habits. This book changed so much for me. Instead of focusing on goals, I try and focus on building up habits that make me who I want to become.
I use Done habit-tracker to keep track of habits I'm trying to build. Some things I have on there include: reading a chapter of a career-focused book each day, drinking enough water, and cleaning my apartment for at least 5 minutes. There's the immediate reward of having the habit change colors after it's completed, and there's an incentive to keep the habit chain going!

Organization

As far as file management goes, I keep everything on Google Drive. That way, if my laptop dies or something, I'll still have a backup. I also only keep files I'm using frequently on my computer to keep that organized. I have folders for projects and for life stuff! I also try to keep my personal and We Learn Code drives separate. Gotta keep work/side-hustle/life balance!
I also keep my browser bookmarks super organized in folders. I only keep things I need, otherwise, I'll save links elsewhere -- like Pinterest or in my notes about something. Bookmarks are for links I frequently come back to. I also have a to-read folder filled with articles that I want to read. I try to allocate some time to get through these from time to time too!

Work-Life Balance

I think the term work-life balance is imperfect, but I work to make sure that I'm not working all the time. I'm someone who very much has a tendency to work a huge number of hours and to abandon other aspects of my life and health to do more work. This isn't good, and I actively work to not do this, especially since I have been much more prone to burnout recently.
First of all, I don't have work email or Slack on my phone. I only have them on my work computer, which I don't touch outside of work hours.
I also try to make my bedroom a technology-free zone. I will say this is way easier when I'm not working from home -- quarantine has made this pretty much impossible. But, I find I sleep so much better if I put my phone and my computer in my living room before I sleep. I also think having dedicated workspaces when you do work from home is so helpful, and it's something I wish that I could more fully implement in my own life (darn city rent prices!).