Annual Year-End Special

Welcome to Building Better Developers, the Developer Nord podcast, where we work on getting better step by step professionally and personally. Let's get started. And welcome back. We are at the last episode of 2021. This will be the last one we record and we will come back in January with season 16. And we're going to look again at some patterns and any patterns. We're going to get a little bit beyond software and look at them at a bigger scale. So we've got a season ahead of us coming in January, probably run into February or so. But for right now, we are wrapping up 2021 with one of our typical now for the last couple of years, our annual sort of year end specials. This episode first, I want to throw some thanks out to all of you. This is something that is done for basically for fun, something I enjoy. I am not going to retire because of this or anything like that. This is definitely not an exit strategy of any sort, but it's just done for those that like to listen for the those of you that are out there that actually get something out of this podcast and the various topics we've covered over now the last few years. And I want to thank you for your time and your consideration and for being, I guess, a be a loyal listener for keeping up as we've made some adjustments over the years. But hopefully for the better, trying to help you become better developers and myself and those that provide any of the information to this, some of the interviews we've had, things like that. I think in every case, it has made those of us that participate, whether actively or as a listener, it brings something to the table. So it definitely for me, at least helps make us better. Thank you for putting the effort in and being that loyal listener and keeping us keeping it so that we've got somebody to talk to. Now, as we get to the end of the year, as always, there is the sort of the balance between looking back and seeing how the year go and looking forward and figuring out what do we want to do next. And within that balance, it is using one to inform the other. And since we're in a hopefully for you with most people, you're right around a vacation time or holiday or something where you at least get a little bit of time to relax and decompress. It's also not a good, not a bad time for a retrospective to think a little bit about what it is that you did that worked and what didn't work. What did you enjoy? What did you not enjoy? I think that latter is key. The more I have, I guess, really researched and experienced different approaches to work, to side hustles, to balance the work life balance that people like to talk about, all those sorts of things. It really does come down to do what you like. That may be difficult. And if you like laying on a couch, that's probably not going to happen. But there are things that I think for everybody, there are things out there that you enjoy doing. It may be something that you feel has no financial value, such as, I don't know, watching a TV show or something like that. But anything that you do that you love, that you can bring your excitement, your level of energy to for others and help that spill over, there's value in that. And it may be something that you blog about or you have a podcast that you do or something along those lines. Or there may be something that you, there's some other product that you have. And maybe there's problems that you have a unique solution to. We had through our interviews, that was one of them that we saw actually in a couple of cases where people took what they had been doing, what was maybe, I would say, sort of the safe route, the things that existed, either a job or an approach that existed. And they make some adjustments to it, made it their own, and then move forward in that new direction or with that new approach, that new solution. That could be something as simple as you have your own little solopreneurship, you have a little company that you do your very specialized work solutions or consulting. Or it could be something where you can scale that up and you can hire other people and they can replicate it and you can grow a business or even an enterprise based on that. But it comes back to that first step of what is it you enjoy? And looking a year ahead and as you're filling out your dance card, as it were, for what is it I want to or need to get done in the quarters and the years ahead, consider what is it that is fun, that is enjoyable to you? Because that is where at the end of this time next year, you're going to be more or less happy based on how much time you spent doing the things that you enjoy versus the things that you don't enjoy. That may seem blatant common sense, but it's something that I don't think we factor into our career and even our life plans often enough. Think about it as a vacation, the archetypical family vacation where I think of the movie even, family vacation where there's this destination, there's all these plans put into place, we're going to be here on this time and there on that time, and these are the things we're going to see and these are the things we're going to do. And there's planning and even research that goes into those vacations. And if you go to something that's further away, it's probably more likely you're going to do that. That's why you even have vacation planners and you have these tours and things like the tour packages that somebody professionally puts together. If you want to do this, if you want to explore Rome or Moscow or Beijing or whatever it is, these are the things you want to do. These are the places you want to go. And here's how you get those, how you get the tickets to the shows you want to go to or access to the places that you want access to, things like that. That kind of planning goes into our vacations, which are not most of our time. We're not on vacation most of the year. We're working most of the year. Our current plan is to go to the shows that we want to go to. And we're not on vacation most of the year. We're working most of the year. Our career is most of our year. Or, you know, I think everybody listens, it's probably your career, but maybe it is. Maybe your focus is your family. But still, there are these there are things that we do that are not vacations that take up huge amounts of our time. And if we're smart, we will do some planning on those as well. Think about what is it you want to do? What is it you really want to accomplish? It should not require it should not be the case where you are in an interview and somebody says, what are your plans for the next three years or five years or what do you want to do next? What is your career path? It shouldn't require those questions to get you to actually think about such things. You should be thinking about them and working towards that, as we've talked about in the past, that career road map. And now that we didn't really focus as much on the we focus more on things that help your career in the past. But this is a good time of year to focus not only on the things that help your career, but the things that you want to do. And that may actually require a complete change in your career. Look at the things that you like to do, the things that are required for your career to advance. It may be part of your struggles in your career is that your those don't line up. If you're it'd be like, you know, trying to go to hopefully a simpler sports analogy. If your love is ice hockey, then your your goals to be a professional golfer maybe are not going to line up at all or let's say a professional swimmer or something like that. It's totally different muscles and strategies and everything else. And so you're if your love is one thing and you're going a completely different direction, then maybe you need to look at changing that. In the year that when you're getting into New Year's resolutions and stuff like that, that may be the ideal time to make such changes. And if not to do them wholesale, because let's face it, we can't just drop everything and pick up a new career. We have the momentum of our existing career. We have bills to pay. We have food that we want to eat, things like that. We like to have, you know, be fed and have a roof over our head. And so sometimes that's what is, you know, we have to have that job. We have to have that career in order to do it. There are other solutions. There are other ways to solve that problem. And so maybe instead of just a wholesale up, I'm going to quit this and go do this other thing. Maybe instead, that's part of what your planning is, is you start taking those, those maybe those baby steps towards whatever the new thing is, start shifting or at least creating momentum in that new direction. So that six months from now, a year from now, five years from now, you are, we'll say in a happier place. The things that you do bring you more joy. That you get to a point where when you're thinking about a vacation or holiday, you're sort of like a, I could take it or leave it because I like doing what I do when I'm not on vacation. I like my work. I will actually miss it. So if I go on a long vacation, I will miss working. That may seem insane, but there are plenty of people that do that. And it's not something that is special to just a few people. It's not like, you know, being born King or something like that, where only a few people have this. In my experience, most people have things that they like and there are the, and when they do those, when they get that natural drive that you have to do something you enjoy, they are far more successful than things that you can't do than things that they do grudgingly. That's just the nature of being us, of being people. So in an effort to give back, as we get to the end of yet another year, I want to throw that out at you is instead of just looking at what it is that you want to accomplish for whatever reason, whether it's for financial reasons or to impress somebody or because it's something that you just see as like that needs to, you need that to complete yourself or to further yourself, whatever that is, or those things are. Exam them, examine them also with the light of, do I enjoy this? Is this something I'm going to have fun doing? And maybe you don't know, so maybe you go try it out, but go into that in such a case to say, hey, I'm going to try this out. And if it doesn't work, I'm going to walk away. I'm going to bail out. I'm going to leave because life is too short. I'm going to do stuff that makes me happy over things that suck the joy out of my day. This is a good time to do that where you're kicked back, you're relaxing, do that little annual retrospective. And particularly before you start getting into the idea of what are my New Year's resolutions going to be? Because if your resolution is something that brings you more fun, enjoy and energy, you will actually, that resolution will actually work. You will, you know, three weeks later, a month later, whatever, whatever that thing is that you want to do, just still be doing it. Almost guarantee it because it's fun because you enjoy doing it. It's easier for you to fit that into your schedule. And that being said, it's time to wrap it up. You know, get out there, have a great, you know, day, couple of days, weeks, whatever it is before we turn around and come into 2022. And then we're going to hit the ground running and get back to work. But until then, get some rest, relax, recharge, take advantage of this time off. And as always go out there and have yourself a great day, a great week, great holiday season, and we will talk to you next time. Thank you for listening to Building Better Developers, the Develop-a-Noor podcast. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon, anywhere that you can find podcasts, we are there. And remember, just a little bit of effort every day ends up adding into great momentum and great success. There are two things I want to mention to help you get a little further along in your embracing of the content of Develop-a-Noor. One is the book, The Source Code of Happiness. You can find links to it on our page out on the Develop-a-Noor site. You can also find it on Amazon, search for Rob Rodhead or Source Code of Happiness. You can get it on Kindle. If you're an Amazon Prime member, you can read it free. A lot of good information about the book, and I'm going to leave it at that. I'm going to leave it at that. You can read it free. A lot of good information there. That'll be a lot easier than trying to dig through all of our past blog posts. The other thing is our mastermind slash mentor group. We meet roughly every other week, and this is an opportunity to meet with some other people from a lot of different areas of IT. We have a presentation every time we talk about some cool tools and features and things that we've come across, things that we've learned, things that you can use to advance your career today. Just shoot us an email at info at developa-noor.com if you would like more information. Now go out there and have yourself a great one.