Building Better Developers, the Develop-a-Noor podcast

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 continuing our end of the year season of specials. Between seasons, but at the end of the year season. So a little combo thing. This episode, we're going to talk about waiting until the last minute. Now this is one of those that's, I think it becomes very apparent, becomes a topic towards the end of each year around the Christmas season with the idea of waiting until the last minute to get a gift. And this sort of, I guess was prompted by watching a, now I guess it's a rather old movie called Jingle All the Way, which is really all about waiting to the last minute, about not doing things in an intentional way. Just allowing yourself to get caught up in other stuff. And then the next thing you know, you're late or scrambling to get something done or to reach somewhere on time. This is, I think, a, I think it's something that we can look at as we may be very diligent, generally speaking, the kind of people that maybe we always make it to a meeting on time and things like that. But there are things that we have on our list of goals and things to do that do get pushback, do get rearranged based on our schedule. Life happens and that is what it is. That's nothing wrong with that. But I think this is what I want to look at this episode is really how we embrace that and how we look at that as a way to build some wiggle room or buffer into our days, into our schedules so that we can get the things done that we want to get done. But also, this goes back to the idea of there's things that don't need to be on our schedule, that don't need to be on our plate. So we need to be, I guess, thoughtful is probably the best way to think about it when we're putting together our plans, particularly as we get to the end of the year, if we're looking for the year ahead, what do we need to do? What do we need to plan for? Something that will help us a lot in this is the actual planning because there are going to be things, there are going to be situations where we really need to think about it and I guess start it in motion well before it needs to be done. Doing so will help avoid surprises and also help us have our ducks in a row so we can get the work done when we need to get the work done. This is definitely a productivity tip or trick or hack or however you want to look at it because one of the biggest things that can derail our plans are when something occurs that takes way more time than we expected or that something comes up that was not figured into our plan. Another good example from recent real life for me is I was just going to go spend a short period of time, take a car over to do emission testings to get the license renewed and things like that and said, oh, okay, here you go, here's my schedule. Luckily I didn't wait till the last minute. I was going to get it done a little early because I figured then the lines aren't going to be as long, there's not going to be as much headaches involved. But sure enough, I go to sit down and it was a car that, it's my daughter's car that she hadn't driven in a while and the battery is dead. And actually it was dead, dead. It was one of those that the battery actually needed to be replaced. So I had to go and I'd figure all that out and then I had to go get a replacement battery and replace that, which was in itself a bit of a challenge because of bad design for the battery placement, which is that kind of stuff. Bad design will be something I'm sure we'll cover in future episodes. What was supposed to be a, I don't know, maybe an hour of activity ended up being, I think, four hours or something like that. And instead of it being like a lunch break, now you're into like half a day and that stuff happens. But I think we need to, when we plan for these things, we can do what we can to avoid it. And this actually goes back also to the idea of the incremental progress. There are touch points, I guess, that we can do on projects that are ways to move things forward and to also to validate that things are in place that will help us when we get to crunch time. When we get to that point where, okay, we really need to focus on this and we really want to get it done as fast as possible. And some things that you may not think about in this sense that definitely are issues or are the kinds of things we need to be concerned about includes things like software versions. How many times have you gone to do some work on a project and find out that something needs to be updated or that there is a library that you use that is no longer valid or that needs to be updated but then it has a conflict with something else or something needed to be backed up and you got to back it up first manually and go through all of that process. Or there's some sort of a complex series of steps you need to do to work, to get your work done and you forget where that is. So now you got to go dig through maybe some old emails or something like that or old notes to figure out where, what is it that I needed to do? Where is that password or that ID or that IP address? These are all things that slow us down. Sometimes dramatically so. Sometimes these are, and I'm speaking from personal experience, there are situations where this should take a couple hours and you lose, there's a whole week lost getting all this stuff together to get that thing done. So this is another thing we gain by doing this incremental progress. It allows us to check in on a project or a task on a regular basis and then even if we don't have the time to put into updates or fixing this latest compatibility or the framework or whatever it is, whatever these gotchas and surprises are, at least we know they're out there. So we know that that's something we're going to have to swing back around to and maybe carve out some more substantial time to address that. That may be something we do on a, maybe we normally are working through our work week and stuff like that, but we realize that, oh, we've got a couple hours we need to put into this thing and we say the only way we're really going to get this done and not drive ourselves nuts is maybe we're going to have to work on a Saturday morning or something. We're going to have to spend a little time over the weekend or maybe we need to pick a night this week and work late to get that thing addressed. Now those are not ideal, but unfortunately the surprises and shocks and obstacles thrown in our way are rarely, if ever pleasant. But it's the old G.I. Joe cartoon, knowing is half the battle. That's what this is. If we know it's out there, at least we can plan for it. There is nothing worse than saying, okay, I've got to get this done in an hour. I should be able to get this done an hour. And you start into it and you realize that, no, this is going to take me eight hours and now I can't really work on this and I've lost probably the hour anyways. So if you go in and we check in on these things on a regular basis and we don't keep kicking stuff down the road, then I think we're going to find that we will get more done overall. Our productivity is going to increase. And although I don't know if I can promise your headaches are going to be lesser, more or less they will be. I mean, let's figure, you know, let's be honest as we all, I think, accept that things happen and they can be frustrating, but they are going to be more frustrating and probably cause more pain when it occurs at the last minute when you're trying to scramble to get something across that finish line and you've got a bunch of roadblocks that have suddenly appeared or we'll say quotes suddenly appeared because there's, I think, an additional frustration we have with ourselves when we say, I could have known this weeks ago or months ago. And simple things like library updates and stuff like that, that you can do digitally where you can download stuff are workable. You can work around those. It may be frustrating because where you could have just kicked off a download and gotten some other stuff done and had all of your software in place, now you're waiting for that stuff to download while you've got a deadline looming over you. But if it's something bigger where you have to, you know, for example, like let's say there's a PC you rarely touch and then you need that for a project and you go to touch that thing and you go to work with it and you find out that the hard drive's died. So that you have to go through the whole replacement, so hard drive and reinstall or whatever. That could take you a lot of time and that could by itself be, you know, sink your ability to get something done on a deadline. So I think it's worth it during this season where there's going to be many examples of, especially in media like movies and TV and things like that, where there'll be somebody waited till last minute and usually some sort of miracle occurs and everything works out. But in real life that doesn't happen that often, if ever. And I guess it happens occasionally. That's why it would be miraculous. Normally it doesn't. Also why it's miraculous. But you also have the frustration that I think you can witness of these people when they do wait till the last second, when they're scrambling to get something done. Another good example of that if you look at any of the, I guess, educational, it's not education, but the education focused stories of kids in high school or in college and there's some big exam and they wait till the last second to study for it. And usually, you know, hilarity occurs, but it's usually not hilarity. It's hilarious for us to watch it, but it's usually the people going through it are suffering a lot that they probably didn't need to suffer. They're pushing themselves when they probably could have avoided that had they done things in a more reasonable schedule. So when you're tempted to put something off, think about that. Is this something you're going to pay for dearly later where you're going to have to come back and work twice as hard potentially to get it done? But the other thing is, as we're planning stuff out, you need to consider that things will occur. If you fill your schedule, fill, you know, 100% fill your schedule, you are going to be frustrated. Things are going to occur that are going to mess with that schedule and then you're going to be stressing about the things that you're not getting done. There's going to be stress and anguish and things like that that, oh my gosh, I've got this schedule and I'm falling behind and I'm falling further behind and it ends up multiplying your pain and discomfort versus being that person that's sort of acknowledged that things will occur. And so when something occurs, you're basically putting it into a bucket of like, oh yeah, okay, I had this bucket for this thing to be dealt with and so I'm going to deal with it with this bucket of time or resources. It's like a financial budget. In a financial budget, if you have a rainy day or emergency fund and something occurs, then you get to go use that emergency fund. And as long as the thing that occurs is covered by it, if you've got a $1,000 emergency account and your car battery needs to be replaced for a couple hundred bucks, then you just go to that emergency fund and it's like, okay, no big deal. And then you just rebuild the fund when you get a chance. The stress is a lot lower versus if you don't have that emergency fund, now you may be trying to figure out what bills are you going to not be able to pay. And of course, that's a good example too, because maybe those bills, because you're going to have to pay something late, now you're going to have late charges and it's going to cost you more because you didn't plan for it. And I think we do see that in our schedules. So while we are in the season of wanting to be better, of wanting to get things done, there is also a common sense or a reality check that we need to include that will help us do these things and be productive and make progress and do it with less stress. Because the more stress we have, generally speaking, the less productive we're going to be. Now you may be the person that works great with the deadline and things like that, but that's just you. There are other events and occurrences and things like that that can be an issue that can cause you to not succeed. So even if you want to wait to the last second and push yourself, the key here is making sure that when you get to that point, yourself is the only one that you're relying on. That you know that all of your systems and resources are in place to be able to allow you to do that last minute push. And this goes back to the movie I was talking about. The whole point was the primary character waited until the last minute to buy his child a gift for Christmas. It happened to be a really popular gift and so it was sold out. And as I said, hilarity ensues. It was a complete train wreck of trying to get that toy for his child. Whereas had that purchase been made two weeks earlier, it would have been a complete non-issue. It would have been very quick, simple. You get in, get it done, and move on. So think about that as you are planning out and also as you're reviewing the year that has just gone past. Whether you're looking back for a year or just the last quarter. And consider this, I think, moving forward as well as you get to future quarters and annual reviews and things like that. Look for the things that were unexpected. Look at the things that caused you headaches. And look at the things that you waited, you pushed them too long, you pushed them off too far, and they caused you issues that you wish you hadn't. And take that into account as you try to plan going forward. Which does mean, and this goes back to something we talk about a lot, trying to touch on projects on a regular basis. Daily or at least weekly, keep moving the ball forward. Because when you do that, the gotchas, the surprises that come up are more likely to be experienced or seen by you sooner rather than later. And thus will allow you the time to make some of these things work out. In some cases, it may be that it ends up being almost no cost to you because you see it coming and you're able to get somebody else to take a look at it or send an email out for somebody else to do something for you, whatever. Or like I said, maybe it's a long download. You can kick it off at night after work and then the file's there the next day as opposed to having to do it during the day when it would slow down you and maybe you're waiting for it to complete. Those kinds of things sometimes will actually almost resolve themselves if you give them enough leeway and a running room beforehand to get the thing done before you truly need it. So try to make your schedule realistic. Maybe even make sure you schedule some catch up time or buffer time on a regular basis, maybe daily, maybe weekly. I would say at least monthly. You have like a day or two that you plan for each month if you want to do it at a monthly level where you say, okay, I'm not going to plan anything on these two days other than catching up on other stuff. That's just how I'm going to work it. And then the other thing is make sure for your primary projects that you can touch them on a regular basis and make that, put that little bit of work into it, keep the ball moving forward and keep yourself current on what sort of concerns might arise for that project and where you may need some help or need to reach out to somebody else so you can do that in a situation where they have enough time to respond to you and you're not sweating bullets waiting for them to get back to you. That's it. That's one I wanted to get you for this time. I'm trying to keep it sort of short as we're in a nice little, hopefully a quiet holiday kind of week for you. Unless you're in retail, then it's absolutely crazy and hopefully you're probably not even listening to this at that time. You wait till it chills out a little bit after the heavy sales periods. The challenge of the week is consider what it would look like on your schedule to have some sort of a buffer actually scheduled in and how would you use that? Maybe even for the week or two ahead, try that. Put that, build that into your schedule and see how that works for you. Because I think everybody's going to be a little different in how they can address that and make use of that. But I think it will be very valuable for you to figure out what works best for you in this situation. As always, 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 today is still progress. So let's keep moving forward together. One more thing before you go. Developer Noor podcast and site are a labor of love. We enjoy whatever we do trying to help developers become better. But if you've gotten some value out of this and you'd like to help us, be great if you go out to developernoor.com slash donate and donate whatever feels good for you. If you get a lot of value, a lot. If you don't get a lot of value, even a little would be awesome. In any case, we will thank you and maybe I'll make you feel just a little bit warmer as well. Now you can go back and have yourself a great day.