Keeping Momentum During Chaotic Times

This is Building Better Developers, the Develop-a-Noor podcast. We will accomplish our goals through sharing experience, improving tech skills, increasing business knowledge, and embracing life. Let's dive into the next episode. Well, hello and welcome back. We are in a holiday week. We are right around Thanksgiving. Hopefully this... If you're listening this on time, it is Black Friday and people are out there shopping like mad people and, you know, snapping up a bunch of deals and stuff like that, or recovering from eating too much the day before. This episode in a between season series of special topics, I want to talk about keeping momentum. As we're into this end of the year kind of stretch, which typically I tend to see it usually starts about November timeframe, especially as you get in the second part of November. You get a good, easily a good six to eight week stretch where there's just stuff going on. There's work, there's interruptions in that because you have either yourself or coworkers or vendors or providers or whoever that is on vacation and taking a day off, maybe sick. You have parties and stuff like that that show up and can sort of interrupt the flow. Your personal life outside of work, you probably have the same kind of stuff where you're having to shop for gifts or you're having to decorate stuff or going to parties or get togethers or you have family over and there's just a lot of distractions. There are a lot of things that disrupt your normal flow of life if it is a normal flow. I think most of us in that early fall, late spring, those times where it just seems like everybody is at work and you get a bunch of five day weeks in a row and stuff like that, then it's easy to get into a rhythm and get stuff done. Particularly the kinds of stuff we're talking about where you're trying to do this daily little momentum, 15 minutes, 10 minutes, something like that every day, pushing the ball forward, getting that forward momentum. When you get into this time, it can be very challenging to keep that momentum going. I want to talk a little bit about that. Now one, momentum is not the holy grail of side hustle or your career or your life or anything like that. If life takes over and your momentum falters, it's not the end of the world. It's not like you're suddenly going to go from being a world renowned success to being a homeless person living in a gutter somewhere. It's not that big a deal. However, if you want to build, then you have to keep the momentum going. During these times, I think it's more important to push your momentum things forward in the day. Get them done sooner rather than later. The idea here is that something's going to happen. Something's going to disrupt your day or your flow. So let's get some stuff done before that disruption occurs. You also have some other options during this time besides just essentially flipping or moving around priorities. Another thing is if you're not going to work, if your work schedule is lighter, then instead of using that additional time up watching Christmas movies or something like that, maybe you spend 15 more minutes locked away in your home office or get to work a little earlier or stay a little later. Or maybe, not a bad idea either, maybe you skip going out for lunch. Instead, work through your lunch because, let's face it, very few people starve during this time of year. You end up having these big meals and all kinds of sweets and other stuff that's maybe not necessarily healthy, but at least this is in the US and the Western world. We tend to overeat a little bit anyways and then this time of year it just seems more so because it's more accessible to have. There's more candy and sweets and empty calories accessible. Plus, our schedules tend to take us off of our exercise routines. So, keep the things that you need to get done or that you want to get done, I guess is better, that need that forward momentum. Get those things pushed earlier in the day, sooner rather than later. Maybe instead of starting your day with, I don't know, reading the news and catching up on email, start your day with the one or two things that you want to do to force that forward momentum. Now, this may cause your schedule to change a little bit because there may be certain things that, for example, exercise. If you go out and exercise, that means you're probably going to come back and have to shower and clean up and stuff like that. So, that may adjust your day because you've got a couple other things, you've got things you're doing a little differently from normal maybe. But if you think through those, I think you can find a way to make those work. If they work in a normal day, then you should be able to find a way to make it work even in these distracting times. And now, besides just your side hustle stuff, I think in general, it is much better for you to just try to squeeze stuff in earlier in the day. If you're going to do a bunch of stuff outside of work during your workday, maybe you're going to say, hey, I'm going to run some errands, I'm going to take a long lunch and maybe start my day a little early, end it a little late, but I'm going to have to do some stuff during the middle of the day. Instead of spreading it out, do what you can to cram everything into the early part of the day. Maybe you start early, but maybe, like I said, maybe you skip lunch and do everything so you effectively leave work early. Now, you may not have the flexibility to do this, but where you have flexibility, see if you can batch stuff together so you do a little better approach at getting in, get the work done, and then go on and do other stuff. Especially with these little things, they may seem... I think what happens is if it's a short thing. If we're doing, say, 10 minutes a day of learning a new language, well, it may be that we get into our day and we're just like, it's just 10 minutes, I'll wait and do it tomorrow or the next day. Well, hopefully, we've been doing this before, so we have a habit and it helps drive us to get it done. A side note on that is this is not really the time to try to really create a habit. It's not a bad idea during this time to where if you can pick up a few minutes here, a few minutes there to try out something. But let's face it, if you settle yourself into a habit during this time period, your schedule is probably going to be sort of disjointed or at least not consistent enough that whatever habit you build, you're going to come into January, February as things settle back down, and you're going to have to adjust that habit into your more normal routine. It's okay to keep things going and it's good to keep things going, but don't assume necessarily that that's going to be your ongoing schedule. I think this is where you sort of say, you know what, I'm not going to worry about my normal schedule. Maybe it's time to even better move so that you don't worry about scheduling stuff. You don't have something where it's like, okay, from 9 to 9.30, I do this every day, and from 9.30 to 10, I'm going to do this other stuff, or from 10 to 12, I'm going to do this other stuff. If you're a scheduler, instead, maybe you try a to-do list. Just put a list together. Here's the five things I want to get done today. Prioritize it and just start working your way through that list. Start at the top, work your way down. And if there's something that you don't have as much as a priority, but something you're going to fit in during the day, then have some method to essentially bump that in priority. So if you get most of the way through your day and you still haven't had that opening to spend 10 minutes working on that thing you want to work on, bump it up. And say, okay, well, I really need to focus on trying to find these, you know, carve out this 10 minutes in the next hour or two, you know, something like that. Move it up so that becomes something that you definitely want to get done. It's nice when it's flexible. Maybe you can fit it in before noon, but once you get afternoon, maybe you just, you know, you're starting to run out of time to still get it done during that day. Now, of course, all of this is sort of assuming workday stuff to some extent. I think it, I have found over the years, now this may be a personal thing. I don't know. So I'm going to throw it out there. I don't know if it works for you or not. I have found during these times, and I don't know why necessarily it is, but it's much easier for me to find time either at the beginning of my day or the end of my day. For some reason, it's easier for me to maybe stay up a little later and do some work. Or in the past, there's been times where I'll essentially come back to work, in parentheses or in quotes. What I'll do is maybe we would do a family movie night or something like that. And although this was a schedule that worked well for me a lot anyways, during the holidays, it seemed like it was really easy to go do all the family stuff. And then everybody else had sort of settled down at 9.30 or 10 or something like that. And then I was able to go spend, I could go spend 30 minutes and go back, get some work done, knock out a couple of things, and then get to sleep. And it didn't really disrupt anything else too much. Now it helped that I was married and had a wife that would maybe spend, maybe we had a busy evening and then she'd be spending 20 or 30 minutes cleaning up, doing dishes, whatever, while I was working. So it was, we weren't, it's not like we lost any time that we could be hanging out or anything like that. That same thing though for however you've got stuff set up, it's just, you're usually sort of wound anyways, you're a little bit more wound up probably if you've had parties and stuff like that, particularly if you, I'm assuming it's a party we didn't go and drink excessively or something like that. Just from the social interaction, everything, you're a little more energized and pumped up and things like that, a little more wired. And so there's a little bit of that need to come down from that. It's a perfect time to maybe get a couple of things done work-wise. If you lose 20 minutes of sleep or 30 minutes of sleep, that's not a big deal because you've got time off and things like that. Or maybe that's a very loose schedule so you can take an afternoon nap or something like that to catch up where you need to, but still get those extra things done that we want to do, that we want to keep the momentum moving forward. And like I said, it's not a bad time to try out stuff. You've got a chaotic schedule anyways, so put something in, try something in the morning or in the middle of the day or at the end of the day, try to just fit it in and see how it works for you. You've got this period of time that it's a great opportunity to try some stuff out. Maybe there's some stuff that you would like to try and you realize that takes you, the problem is I mean, it takes more time than you have. And so you try it out during this period and if it doesn't work, then you say, okay, I'm not going to do it. Or maybe I'm going to have to wait and only do this. Maybe this is something I only have time for during these holiday seasons or if I'm on vacation or something like that. A good example would be doing a blog. It may be that you could, if you've been wanting to start a blog for a while and that you potentially, maybe you can write, sit down and write something in 15 or 30 minutes and crank out a nice article and be ready to go and that's fine. And that works in your normal schedule. Or it may be that you're not as fast as that, or that the research or the work required you underestimated and you find out that no, it actually takes you a few hours to put together a blog article. And so doing that three times a week during your normal schedule wouldn't work. So you can say, okay, well, obviously I don't have the bandwidth for that. So adjust accordingly. Maybe that means you're not going to put out a blog multiple times a week. Maybe only do it once a week, once every other week, once a month, something like that. All of that is easy to try during this period. You get a good, I could say four, six, eight week period. You have enough time to get over the newness of it and settle into it a little bit, even though it's a hectic schedule notwithstanding. And that allows you to try it out. And which again, as we've talked about before, it works perfect if you've got that knowledge going into the new year. Maybe some of those resolutions you were going to make, you can try them out, do a little trial period during November and December, and either decide that yes, those are resolutions that you, that's when you really want to do, or no, it's not. It's something you really just can't do now, or maybe not at all. Or maybe it's something you just, you thought you were going to enjoy it and you realize you really don't. That was really something just, you've gone out, you tried it, and you say, I don't think I want to invest that much time in it. It's just not for me. So don't let the chaos of this time dissuade you from trying to get some things done, trying to keep that momentum going. Back to what we talked about. Take the things that you want to keep moving forward and protect them by doing them earlier in the day, by moving up them, moving them up on priority where you normally may just fit it in. Or maybe you have a set period during the day that you normally do those. If your schedule is not going to allow that that time period to be available, then take a look at what is available. And don't be afraid to make that time period very early in the morning, like right when you get up, or part of your morning routine, or at night, before you go to bed. Once you're that period between wrapping up the day and where you normally would be settling in and doing a couple things to get ready to go to sleep, instead, maybe you go to sleep a little later and you get a couple things done at night. It's not bad. Doing that kind of stuff will help you keep going through these chaotic times of holidays and stuff like that. And it's not bad, like I said. I've said before, there's sometimes you get a little bit of lull times and stuff like that in a lot of cases. Now, some industries are different. It is 24-7 from September, October, November, somewhere in there through to the new year because that's their busy time. But if you're in one of those industries that's not, this is an excellent time to take advantage of that and try a couple things out. And if you are in an industry that's very busy during this time, there's probably a time that they're not. And so keep these things in mind when you get to that less hectic period of the year. I think most people have a somewhat seasonal rise and fall. I think that's a good example of how you can get to the business and the kinds of tasks are asked to do. That being said, your challenge of the week is what is it that you need to keep in your repertoire of daily tasks? What is it that you want to keep that forward momentum going? And spend a little time to see is that going to be easy to do or do you maybe need to adjust some to make sure that you keep those things going forward so that those habits continue to build, continue to grow. And it's sort of a one A and one B. Is there something that you haven't tried yet that was on your list? Maybe this is a time to set aside for the next week or two and try it out, see if it works for you, see if it really is something that you have some drive to get it done. That being said, as always, particularly in this time of year, just go out there and have yourself a great day, a great week, and we will talk to you next time. Thank you for listening to Building Better Developers, the Developer Noor podcast. For more episodes like this one, you can find us on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon, and other podcast venues, or visit our site at developernoor.com. Just a step forward a day is still progress. So let's keep moving forward together.