Taking Advantage of Downtime

Welcome to building better developers, the developer podcast, where we work on getting better step by step professionally and personally. Let's get started. And welcome back. We have been on a little bit of a break here, but it's that time of year. Yes, you got the little turkey gobble beforehand. It is Thanksgiving week here in the U.S. and get a couple episodes. We're going to sneak in sort of special topics kind of things. The first one, we have visited this a couple of different times over the years, but it is always good to think about going into the slow time of year. Now, yes, you may have a business, a job where you're getting into the peak. Maybe this is something to do with retail or maybe seasonal where this is your entire business occurs, maybe on Black Friday or through Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, the holiday season. But for a lot of us, that's not the case. We have vacations, we have holidays. Work itself usually is, depending on where you're at, can be a little slower because so many people are taking vacations and holidays and you just don't have everybody around to get stuff done. So you have a little more time to sit back and think whether this is at work or not at work. And it's important to go into such periods of time with an intentional thought about how you want to take advantage of it. Don't waste these times. Now, the work time is a little different. You're there, you're at work, you're putting your hours in, and maybe you don't have as much on your plate each day as you normally would. Maybe this is one of those things where you have your standard stuff, whatever you do daily, weekly, once a month or something like that. But everybody always has that extra stuff. There's always things going on. There's either customers to deal with, vendors to deal with, managers, coworkers. But when you thin the herd, when you have less people around, you have less to worry about. You have less distractions. And so that should allow you to be more productive. And not only that, it becomes a very good time for you to do the deep thinking kinds of exercises. Things like assessing how your last year went, planning for the year ahead, maybe catching up on some of those tasks that always get pushed to the next week, to the next month. We all have those. Those are the things that just, they aren't high enough priority, but maybe having them on your plate or having them on your to-do list does have a, you know, it has a cost or there's a burden. Maybe you're not as productive as you could have been because this task hasn't been done. Or maybe it's just a distraction that every week you spend a little of mental time thinking about it and then say, oh, nope, I'm not going to worry about it. I have more important things to do. This is where a to-do list, so you may be like thinking, no, not a list, but a to-do list of some sort, a backlog, a, maybe a wish list or a bucket list. Things that need to get done at some point, but not really today or maybe not even tomorrow is a great thing to have. This is, if you don't have one, this is a perfect time to build one. The things that are tasks that you would like to get done at some point. This may be documentation if you're a developer. It could be building out some unit tests. It could be some sort of technical debt that has been laying around. Those sorts of things are perfect for this time. When you're not overloaded, when you're not at 100% or more in your capacity, then especially if you're down at 50% or 60%, yes, it's nice to coast for a little bit, but it's also very helpful to use this time to get ahead a little bit, invest in your future and get a couple of those things knocked out. Like I said, if you don't have that list, start to build that list. It is not a bad use of your time to say, okay, next time I have a little bit of downtime, what are some tasks that I want to put on my to-do list to keep myself busy, not overly busy, but busy and also productive and maybe even help my daily, weekly workout along the way. There are numerous things that could fall into this category, and some of it may be very innovative. It could be things like I do this certain task or this process all the time, and I have an idea of how to automate it or outsource it. Maybe now is time to do some research on it, to spend a little time on that and maybe get that done. Who knows what kind of time could be freed up from then on? These things are not just busy work necessarily. It's not just I'm working on this list just to work on this list. It's that I have this stuff that makes sense to get done. These are the kinds of things that people may think don't make a difference, but they do. When you read about wildly or even moderately successful people, a lot of times you will see that they take full advantage of these sorts of downtimes. Instead of deciding to go play solitaire for a couple of days and burn some hours that way and kill time, they find ways to fill that time with something that is productive, that is a good investment in their future. It helps you to do the same. Now the flip side of that is particularly if you're in a situation where you've been working 110% or more, when you've been working your butt off for a long time, sometimes you need that rest. Sometimes you need that less stressful time to just recharge a little bit. Be cognizant of that. It is not just about getting things done. It is about keeping a healthy mindset. It may be that your best bet is to just play minesweeper for an hour or something like that and just mentally check out and recharge a little bit. This is more important when we talk about things outside of work. We're talking about life itself, more family time, home time, side hustle time that a lot of us have. This is where how we apply our time and that whole mythical work-life balance all become much more important to think about. In a similar sense, it is very helpful to have a to-do list for those times when you're... This isn't when it's vacation. Sometimes you need to take a vacation and you need to vacate. You need to shut off all the electronics, quit the email, all of that stuff. Don't work. We all do it and that doesn't make it right. It's something that I think all of us need to work on, is to be able to say, all right, I'm taking a vacation day. I'm going to take a three-day vacation, three-day weekend, and I'm going to take a vacation kind of time. Instead of working our butt off until 3 a.m. the night before and then checking emails and catching a couple of meetings while you're on vacation, we'd actually work a normal day, go on vacation, don't work, come back, figure it out. The work will still be there. We always know it will be piled up. Sometimes we have to allow for that to happen. Just say, okay, we'll catch up when we catch up. Now, it may be that you're in a situation that's not possible, but if so, you need to find ways to work yourself to a position where they are. Whether you have to work on your delegation, whether you need to outsource stuff, whether you need to cross train, whatever it is that you need to do. Maybe you need to get another job. Maybe you're in a situation where you are so invaluable to your company that they don't allow you to go on vacation. I know a story of a guy that I worked with that was in that situation. He was the developer that was the right-hand man of the CEO and ended up, I think it was his honeymoon. I think it was an anniversary trip that was planned. Last minute, something came up work-wise and I think he ended up bailing on the whole trip. Short end of that story, he was not married to that woman for much longer. I don't know anything else about it. Maybe it was a good move. Probably not. In general, you need to be in a situation where you can take a vacation and actually leave, actually shut off work and get away for a while. That is the whole point of a vacation. Holidays are somewhat like that as well. You should take some time. Go do something different. Whatever it is that recharges you. If work recharges you, great, but still do something else for a little bit. Then you can always come back to work. You can find a way to, no pun intended, work it in. This is where having a list is very useful because you can, it's not so much stuff for you to do as maybe it's a little more limiting. So that you get through your list, don't add to your list. Take time off. That's something I've done many, many years because I tend to take long chunks when I can. For example, maybe the last couple weeks of the year, I will just take time off. Now I may still do things like this. I may do a podcast or some things here that I may write a little bit, something like that. But generally speaking, not work. Along the way, I make sure that I do things like, I don't know, I may have a little mini project. Maybe I'm going to paint some rooms around the house or one year I've spent a bunch of time putting, taking all my vinyl collection and converting it over to digital. There's another time I converted all my CDs to digital. There may be vacation where you're going to go away. Maybe for a day, maybe for a week. Go visit some relatives. Just something to get away. But along those times, since I have usually a week, two weeks, something like that to work with, I may have an hour a day that I'm going to say, well, I'm going to do a little bit of work. I'm going to make some progress on X, whatever that happens to be. Maybe a little coding, maybe a little writing, maybe a little blogging or something like that so that I'm mostly resting during the days doing whatever it is I want to do, but still have a little bit of that momentum so that particularly when you're talking a longer period of time, like a week or two, when I go back to work, there is still some momentum going. I haven't totally lost that forward momentum of getting things done, but also I've spent a lot of time doing other stuff. It may be as simple as set up some sort of schedule. So for every hour you work, you take two or three or four or five hours that you do something that's not work. That's just if you're a list person, make that list. You can have a very simple one hour of work, four hours of play and put a couple of those items on your list and boom, your day is full. And that's what you need to stick to. Don't let the work drag you away from the recreational side of it. However, do allow the recreational side of it to drag you away from work. If you find yourself completely sidetracked and going down rabbit holes that have nothing to do with work, that's the time to do it. Vacation, holidays, and don't feel bad about it. Don't feel ashamed about it. Don't feel like, Oh no, I'm not getting work done. Your mental attitude should be that the work you should be doing during that time is relaxing, is recovering and recharging. Now, this may seem contrary to how often we focus on getting things done and being productive and having lists and being able to fill all of the minutes of the day. However, it's not. We need to fill those minutes of the day, but sometimes we need to fill them with things that recharge us instead of drain us. And this is where it really does come down to taking advantage of such time. It's perfect as you get towards the end of the year to look back at the year you've just lived through. This one may be more so than most because it has been more than a little bit chaotic. Not that 2020 was much better. However, so much stuff has gone on. It is a perfect time to assess what makes you tick. What is it that you enjoy? What is it that you don't enjoy? Now you're not going to find a job that is everything you enjoy all the time and you never have to do the things you don't enjoy. But you can definitely find situations where whatever it is you enjoy doing, the work you enjoy is done more often the work that drains you. Thinking about that during these times is perfect because you can, you know, in your time off, you can figure out what it is that you like and for the things that you like, what is it you like about them? If it's watching movies, catching up on TV or something like that, if that's something that just really helps you relax, then maybe there's something about that process. Something about the movies that you watch or how you watch them or the shows or the people you're hanging out with or the activities you do that is some sort of a, where there's some sort of a corollary to what you do at work where you can say, oh, I like this and because I like this, this is why this work energizes me and this other work drains me. Now a slight recommendation is there is this thing called the genius of work. All right. I think it's actually it's the working genius by Patrick Lencioni, L-E-N-C-I-O-N-E. And there's also a working genius podcast and the other one he does, I think it's called At the Table. And it's, he is a consultant that's a business consultant and is about getting the productivity out of your company, making people enjoy the work they do. And working genius is just like, well, not just like, if you think of Enneagrams and Myers-Briggs and some of those others, it's another one of those types of tests, but it's not quite the same. And although I think it's currently 20 or 25 bucks to take the test, you can listen to the podcast. He's got a book about it. There's some stuff online that you can read to get a feel for what it is. And if you want to take the test and I have no horse in this race and I don't get any kickbacks or anything like that, but something like that I think would be very valuable for you. If you don't really understand what makes you tick, and particularly even if you don't have language for it. So you have certain things that you know you like, but you can't communicate those to others, or maybe you feel sort of wrong because those things that you want to do, the other stuff that you don't want to do, you feel like, I still need to do that or else I'm being lazy or I'm not being a part of the team or something like that. This is a good time to look into some of those kinds of tools. Do some self-assessment, figure out what it is that you like and what you don't like, figure out what you're comfortable with. And this may be includes like eating schedules and sleeping schedules and work versus family and all of those things. You could spend weeks, probably a year contemplating them, reviewing them, figuring it all out, but maybe take a little time here while you're in the holidays, while you're sitting in line instead, waiting to check out to buying Christmas gifts or something like that, or out celebrating the holidays, waiting for the check to come while you're eating dinner with everybody, whatever it is, spend a little time considering maybe how you can make some adjustments. Maybe that's your thing going forward as you get into January, maybe that's one of your New Year's resolutions is you're going to make some changes because you realize that some of the things you're doing too much that drains you and not enough that energizes you. And so now drained or energized, hopefully you're going into a couple of days off. If not, apologies for acting like everybody reminding you that there are people that have time off while you may be working like mad on Black Friday, but we will come back in a couple of days and we'll do our Thanksgiving episode and then I'm going to take some time and reflect a little bit and then we'll come back for our end of the year Christmas specials there. So no challenges this week, just take it easy. Try not to eat too much, try not to have too much fun, but do enjoy every second that you have with friends and family. That being said, let's get back to it. So have yourself a great day, a great week, and we will talk to you next time.